Earlier last year, the Erich Saide photography team took a trip down to southern Mexico to capture and document the inner workings of the Los Filos gold mine in Mexico. It was an interesting adventure and we learned a whole lot about the inner workings of gold mining. The mine has both an open pit mine as well as an underground mine and we left no stone unturned.
From underground blasting to pouring of the gold and everything in-between, we embedded ourselves into life on the mine and captured some very interesting images that not just anybody has seen before.
After a taxi-plane-car-private plane trip straight into the mountain tops near the mine, we got straight to work capturing daily activities of the mine. We were tasked with creating promotional and marketing material for new owners, Leagold and to highlight some of the industry leading processes that occur there.
Here is a small glimpse of the photo’s we shot that show the inner workings of this gold mine:
Open Pit mining as seen above was very interesting to capture but it is when we got the chance to go into the working LOS FILOS underground mine that the experience became very real. It was a challenge to come up with lighting scenarios for the heavy mining equipment as well as portraits of the workers in an otherwise pitch black environment. The Profoto B1 battery powered lighting system was a dream to work with in one of the harshest environments that a photographer could possibly think of taking location photography lighting.
We spent two full days in the underground mine and here is an example of some of the images we captured:
And lastly the highlight of the trip, the opportunity to see the actual final product being poured by the professionals. The Gold didn’t come out how we thought it would (Yellow and shiny), but what a great experience overall to see this precious resource being poured.
This trip to the beautiful country of Mexico gave the team a new perspective on the lives of those who work so hard to mine this valuable mineral. The Mexican people are some of the friendliest people we met and we had so much fun spending time with them as we learned about what they did everyday. Have a look at some of the behind the scenes we captured along the way:
A huge thanks to Leagold for having us out to shoot this and we look forward to the future collaborations.
Please check out www.erichsaide.com  for more Erich Saide photography. Please also leave a comment and share if you enjoyed this type of content.
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