Foto's

I spotted these brightly coloured and extravagantly decorated jeepneys in the Antipolo City jeepney terminal yesterday afternoon – they reminded me of when I first started visiting the Philippines more than 30 years ago when nearly every jeepney on the road looked like these. Nowadays, probably because of the economic situation, most of the jeepneys look like those in the second photograph that I have placed in the Workshop – still quite colourful but not so extensively decorated and with much less artwork.

I have noted though that in certain towns and on certain routes – perhaps because of ‘competition’ between owner drivers – most of the jeepneys still look like those that I saw in Antipolo City. Some people say these colourful icons of the Philippines will soon disappear from the roads because they use too much fuel – that will be sad as they are very much a part of Filipino culture.

The jeepney has been a symbol of the Philippines ever since the end of WW2 when surplus US army jeeps were converted into public transportation vehicles. Since then they have been manufactured in the Philippines on an extended wheelbase to carry 16-18 passengers, and provide the backbone of the public transportation system in both city and rural areas.

There is a fixed fare of 7.5 pesos (about 15 US cents) on city routes. On longer routes outside of the city, the fare is a little higher, but still very cheap for the distance covered. The only thing that worries me about traveling on a jeepney is whether the driver can see where he is going – on many jeepneys there are so many stickers and decorations on the front windscreen, it is hard to see how the driver can see the road.

It would have been great for this shot if there had been a blue sky yesterday, but unfortunately it was very overcast. So I did a tight crop to minimise the amount of sky in frame.

And yes, I did bump up the saturation, but not as much as you would think. The light was very dull, and the increase in saturation has only restored these vivid colours to what the eye sees.

I have uploaded this at only 700 pixels across because with the amount of detail and colour in the image, I had to compromise between file size and compression quality.