;)
Paging Sancho Panza
Monday, May 30, 2011 at 1:12PM I am fascinated by fields of wind turbines. Over the past few years, we have watched the assembly of dozens of them along our horizon. The pieces are unloaded from giant cargo ships onto eighteen-wheeled trucks — the propeller blades longer than the trucks. Surely, I think to myself when I see the turbines idle, surely, nothing could make those great beasts move. Nothing, of course, but the sea breeze.
They are simple machines, these wind turbines. A post, an axis, and a three-armed propeller. They are elegant and powerful. Driving by them yesterday I wanted to measure their speed, to count their revolutions per minute, or perhaps more narcissistically to count their revolutions per my mile on the highway. I wasn’t driving and didn’t have a watch, so I just watched them spin, faster than I ever imagined, their titan blades slicing the blue sky.
Passing back through the wind farm in the dark, I was struck by the absolute precision of the blinking red lights on every turbine. Dozens of them, as many as I could hold in my field of vision, blinked their horizontal red lights on and off in perfect unison from the tops of their towers. I wanted a picture of the lights right then, a way to hold that image in my hand. I wanted a photograph of the turbines in the dark. I suppose that might be a stupid photo, a dark skyline, the lights of Corpus Christi on the horizon, a smattering of red dots.
I can’t articulate exactly what I want to capture in that photograph - the unity, the swinging power of the great blades in the dark. I know a photo doesn’t capture sound, and I couldn’t hear them over the road noise, but I wanted the photo to capture the sound I knew they were making, their great whump or whoosh. I can’t articulate how I would take that photo or why I want it.
Only that I do.
Reader Comments (2)
Go to flickr.com and search for wind turbines. I don't know if you'll find the red light photo you want, but there are many cool shots there. You may even be able to find some shots of the particular wind farm at which you were gazing.
Here's a sample I liked:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44571876@N00/3665768700/
Yes, this one, http://www.flickr.com/photos/glennaa/3752090632/ and one other by that photographer are from our wind farm, and the whole pool here, http://www.flickr.com/groups/windfarms/pool/ has some amazing shots. Not many at night though...