Eyewitness: Documenting our industrial footprint on the land

Some of the world's top photographers have trained their lenses on the marks being made by mankind on nature. Those best known for aesthetic brilliance, technical mastery and consciousness raising include Colin Finlay and Edward Burtynsky.

Finlay has won Picture of the Year International six times. During breaks between global documentary projects, he has spoken in Washington and San Francisco about consciousness-raising images. His books of photography include the recent, award-winning "Testify," which conveys images of people and landscapes transformed by the march of industry. The enlightening images invite the viewer to draw independent conclusions.

When visiting Ireland after graduating from the University of California, Finlay was confronted by a soldier aiming a rifle at his head. In response, Finlay raised his camera's viewfinder, and a photojournalist was born.

Finlay's series include images of strip-mined West Virginia mountains, water into which chemicals have leached, and climate effect contrasts in Sudan and Antarctica. His landscapes echo the determination and inventiveness man has poured into energy development, the power to alter vast tracts of land, and the vulnerability of nature as well as people.

His visual eco-stories tell of increasing droughts and chemical use in South and Central America that could drive millions of "environmental refugees" to our borders in 30 years.

Edward Burtynsky depicts the tension between mankind's struggle to preserve and to exploit the landscape. He spoke recently in Washington at the opening of Oil, his exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. "Make the invisible visible" is his goal, the Canadian artist says. Commanding shots, often taken from seemingly impossible, elevated angles, capture the power of structures built for extracting metals, refining fuels, generating power and creating infrastructure for today's "motor culture." His images of "manufactured landscapes" translate abstract, faraway concepts of energy use into physical forms; he aims to picture the environmental toll of energy.

Burtynsky also looks at the effect on people under the radar, such as men recycling waste oil to glean resources for sale. Their oil-coated bodies outglisten the oil drums in their yards.

The 2004 Technology-Entertainment-Design winner's images also capture unexpected beauty: Ontario refinery structures resembling church organ pipes, oil slick reflections, motorcyclists massing for a KISS concert a truckers' jamboree.

Many viewers come away with greater appreciation of finite resources and higher awareness about the use and costs of energy. The images are reminders of the benefits of reducing energy use, recycling materials and seeing the potential resources within things typically regarded as waste.