A shaft of late-afternoon sunshine wedged itself beneath convective towers and their cores to form a short but brilliant double rainbow, as backdrop to wind turbines. Located on private land just north of the Pawnee Buttes and Pawnee National Grassland, the Cedar Creek Wind Farm delivers around 550 MW of power to the Colorado grid. Wind turbines are no cleaner, have a far larger land footprint, and are orders of magnitude less efficient per kilowatt hour, compared to nuclear (my strong preference)! Still, they can be a useful part of an “all of the above” approach to energy that gradually can wean us off more-polluting methods. Photogenic or unsightly? I see them as both, but situationally dependent. At times they can be a visual nuisance and awful eyesore, and I do try to minimize artificial clutter in sky photography. Regardless, like other man-made structures, sometimes wind turbines compositionally frame unusual settings (say, a wild-looking cloud formation or even a tornado) in novel ways.
17 N New Raymer CO (15 Jun 13) Looking E
40.8712, -103.8616Double Rainbow, Towers and Power
A shaft of late-afternoon sunshine wedged itself beneath convective towers and their cores to form a short but brilliant double rainbow, as backdrop to wind turbines. Located on private land just north of the Pawnee Buttes and Pawnee National Grassland, the Cedar Creek Wind Farm delivers around 550 MW of power to the Colorado grid. Wind turbines are no cleaner, have a far larger land footprint, and are orders of magnitude less efficient per kilowatt hour, compared to nuclear (my strong preference)! Still, they can be a useful part of an “all of the above” approach to energy that gradually can wean us off more-polluting methods. Photogenic or unsightly? I see them as both, but situationally dependent. At times they can be a visual nuisance and awful eyesore, and I do try to minimize artificial clutter in sky photography. Regardless, like other man-made structures, sometimes wind turbines compositionally frame unusual settings (say, a wild-looking cloud formation or even a tornado) in novel ways.
17 N New Raymer CO (15 Jun 13) Looking E
40.8712, -103.8616