Viewscape?
by Hank Pennington
Les' great photo of the Pawnee wind farm inspired me to post this from a just-completed industrial shoot. I think the way the windmill overlays the view from edge to edge and top to bottom amplifies the potential effect of windmills on the landscape all over the West. Yeah, we need the alternative energy, but views (and photography) are already suffering. What's it going to be like in 10 years?
For scale, note the tiny people here and there in the frame. Each individual blade on this thing is over 120 feet long. That's 12 stories in urban terms, for a total blade span of nearly 250 feet!
Nikon D2X @ 200 ISO, Nikkor 12-24mm lens, handheld.
Note: I returned home in June from 3 months on the road, landing in the middle of languishing chores, looming visitors, a web sit in development, and two overlapping industrial shoots and an assignment shoot. Order is nearly restored, so I should be spending a lot more time at NPN. I've missed this place!
Comments
6 commentsColorado (and Wyoming and Kansas) are blessed with largely unoccupied flat spaces with lots of wind. Today we got an announcement for another large wind farm near the Kansas border - this one for my own rural electric co-op company. It won't affect any viewscapes other than the wide open prairie itself, thank goodness.
The best areas for wind in the PNW are off the coast; these hilltop windmills aren't terribly efficient because you can only place one or two per hill, which increases transmission wire requirements...
Great job on this.
The question of windmills poses dilemmas, doesn't it? We have three of these now, each putting out 3.5 megawatts, for roughly 10% of Kodiak city's domestic electric needs. Prior to this we were 80% hydroelectric and 20% diesel. Theoretically, with the addition of 3 more we can dispense with the diesel for more than emergency backup, leaving us essentially 100% renewable. Heck of an accomplishment for a town of 10,000 people, but oh, that poor skyline!
Counterpoint: at least you can still see the mountains in the background. It's two f-stops darker back East.
In my mind windmills represent intelligent progress, and a hopeful future of a cleaner society more in harmony with nature. Therefore, when I see large windmills I don't think of them as eyesores in the same way that I would with oil or gas drills.
I would say that the visual complaints are inherently superficial and selfish. Photography is low on the list of real priorities compared to the need for clean renewable energy.