Wind Turbines, near Tracy, CA, 2010
All the pixels, no wind required, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4491948497
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This was captured near the Tesla substation (no relation to the car company) near Altamont Pass with a DSLR and a 400mm lens, compressing the turbines in a way that made them resemble a histogram.
There's a *lot* of power being generated in those hills. There was an audible hum in the air and vibrations could be felt in the ground. In some spots, the camera rebooted from induced currents.
Infrastructure like this is easy to ignore, but has an accidental beauty that I think is worth examining.
@mattblaze Oooh, rebooting camera, no bueno! LOL.
@ai6yr Yeah. The particularly disturbing thing is this was a Nikon D3, which supposedly is shielded to deal with high electromagnetic fields. But not this high.
The scale of these wind farms is beyond what we're equipped to process in day-to-day human experience. They conquer the landscape in ways we can't fully comprehend even when they're in front of us. In a sense, they're abstract sculptures of themselves, mostly visible in fleeting glances from interstate highways or airplane windows.
Infrastructure is heroic.
@mattblaze Agreed. They are numerous and gigantic—far removed from our everyday experience.
Whenever i would drive east on the I10 out past Palm Springs, and go over the rise revealing so many huge windmills, our dog Molly would look up, scan the sky with a sad face, then lay down, face away, sighing. She did not approve of them.
