Happy Snapper

Rob Hudson and I take a trip to the Wind Turbine Farm just outside Cardiff. In the dark. With a video camera. Hmm…

The Turbines have been on the location checklist for quite a while now.. I had the initial thought that they might be an good location after our night trip to Maen Llia in the Breacon Beacons.

Rob then promptly did a reccy, which sufficiently spooked his wife Kath so much that she vowed never to go again! Luckily Rob did and bagged some fantastic dawn shots.. Which you can find on his stream.

But the shot to end all shots was a full moon lit turbine surrounded by delicate star trails, blades proudly rotating - not disappearing in a long exposure blur. Life and the weather got in the way on more than one occasion but last Thursday it seemed the time might be right for a short while.

We had to overcome one problem in order to get the shot. A long exposure of the rotating blades, even in the dark, would render the blades invisible as they disappear in the long exposure blur. So we used a separate flash gun to illuminate the blades multiple times during the exposure. This had the effect of freezing the blades, allowing them to be present in the final shot.

I counted down the exposure time whilst Rob ventured off into the dark (without the torch!) to flash the turbines themselves.

Here you can see a short video of how we got on, and the conditions we had to deal with