2016 Western Colorado
On the drive to Colorado, I stopped around midnight to photograph this wind turbine electricity generating array just south of Sweetwater, TX. The Milky Way was making an appearance, as well as a supercell thunderstorm ahead, just outside of Lubbock. Every red light you see in these night images marks the top of a wind turbine.
201609 Colorado Trip-0004
Freaky image, I know. Let me expain: I wear a headlamp after dark. When trying to protect my night vision, I use the red lamp. My camera is on a tripod in the roadway. I have two relatively normal, functional human hands I use to set all the various functions on my camera. What I didn't realize: I actuated the shutter release while punching most of the buttons on the camera while trying to switch settings from daytime shooting to long-exposure night mode stuff. Result: freaky image of me setting up a shot!
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Final image. TX Route 153 between Happy Valley and Sweetwater (I love the old school homeyness of Texas place names). All the red marker lights on top of the hundreds, maybe thousands of wind turbines all turn on...and off...together...on a...two second...interval. It's disconcerting because there are no other lights visible from this spot except car headlights, and cars at this time of night are minutes apart.
201609 Colorado Trip-0017
This scene became my barometer, so to speak, of light conditions up in The Monument. If I found the quality of light on the complicated geometry of the rocks sufficiently different from what I had photographed previously, I grabbed the tripod and camera bag and drove up there to photograph. Hang in there, I'm going to show you The Monument.
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