Doel Highlighted - a photo on Flickriver

Doel Highlighted

For people not familiar with my documentary on the village of Doel (Belgium): it's a small 700-year old parish on the left bank of the river Scheldt and located near Antwerp. Although Doel is small, its skyline is well-known because it hosts a big nuclear power plant with two giant cooling towers.

Due to the expansion of Antwerp's seaport, Doel is destined to be overrun by newly planned docks and basins. In the early 1970s, the Port Authority ignored farmers' and villagers' protests and started to expropriate houses in several polder villages, hereby sacrificing local rural communities to industrial and economic interests.

As a result, the village began to decline. Successful actions by protest groups and local politicians in the late seventies, however, managed to temporarily put a halt to the Port Authority's expansion plans. But its survival was relatively short-lived. After many years of procedures and wrongful dealings, inhabitants received an official letter notifying them their houses should be evacuated by 1 September 2009. The already declining number of in habitants, dropped dramatically to approximately 75 people in 2010 (originally 900 people). The Flemish Government is, as of 2009, demolishing houses step by step. The really tragic thing of it all is, that there's no immediate prospect for a new dock in the near future.

Currently (2018) 19 people still live in Doel. In January 2018, there were only 18 inhabitants. In April 2018 a baby was born in Doel, a novelty since decades.

Although Doel is becoming a more and more eerie and mysterious place to be, it still can easily enchant and hypnotize you with a little help of mother nature. This is a view on the Engelsesteenweg, at sunset. Most houses are empty, but still breath the feel of the past.

Technical stuff
This HDR shot consists of three hand-held photos. For once I had my tripod with me, but left it in the car when I set off to walk around. Due to the fast dissipating sunlight, getting it from the car wasn't an option. Thanks to the Fujifilm’s X-T2 technology and handling capabilities, it's possible to shoot a bracketing series in less than faction of second, really diminishing ghosting and blurring. Something that's really smart when so many overhead power lines are depicted in a shot. Of course a tripod would have resulted in an even sharper image, but I'm still quite happy with the result.
Post-production was done in Aurora HDR 2018.

Taken in: Belgique / Oost-Vlaanderen / Doel (show map)

Taken on: December 15, 2018

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