Power Stations in 2008

It's been a while since I last blogged, mainly cause I've been busy with the
band and out taking photos. 

 

My Leeds project has come to a pause for the time being, it was ideal whist
the sun was setting at 5:30, I cold dive into town after rework and get a
valuable hour of shots in, the head home and process them all evening. Now the
light's here longer, you're out later, you've not got the time to process reams
of HDR files, so I've decided on a new project to motivate me over the
summer. 

Power Stations.

An odd one maybe? But I can see 3 of the biggest in the
country from my bedroom window, and over the years have got some classy shots of
the sun setting behind the plumes of steam, creating fire-like clouds that
reflect in the near by rivers. 

This one is a shot of Drax, Europe's biggest coal fired station and supplier
of 1/7th of the UK's electricity. It's also got 2 carousels of 6 cooling towers
which gives a little extra interest for the photographer. I pulled into the side
of the road to get the steam and saw there was a huge pool of water just in a
field, so had a wander in and was blown away by the reflections. Quite special
as you can see.

 

Quite a different view of Drax here - this is about 2 miles up the road to
the nearest M62 junction, I was trying to get the light poking through the oil
seed rape in the foreground.

In fact, one of my objectives is to show how close crops, be they cabbage,
wheat, barley or oil seed, coexist with these monster power plants. How our food
is going to be affected by the pollution they pour out. Here's a shot of a newly
planted field which is very close to Drax.

 

I'm also going for the dramatic mono statements too, here's shot of
Eggborough from a long way away - 200mm lens, F32 and 5 seconds.

 

This one is Eggborough from pretty close up, got asked to move on by the
security guards after this, I guess I look like a Muslim terrorist, sure they
all have bags of Pork Scratchings in their boots too.

Here's one of Ferrybridge from close up, this was 30 seconds so the steam can
smooth and dissipate a lot more.

 

So this is something I'll be popping out to capture on those nights where it
look nice out. You need some kind of focus with photography to keep the interest
up. The first years will be all about learning your craft and developing your
style. but now I'm, into my 4th year of serious learning and I've covered my
local are many times, I need something to keep the fire burning on those nights
when I really would rather sit indoors and watch telly.

What's your project for 2008?