Bummer that I have to resize these photos and videos to 500 pixels wide, because they’re really cool full size! For instance, yes, there IS a guy standing next to the hook on that crane. Someone has to guide things into place. Naturally the crew takes lots and lots and LOTS of safety precautions for their workers and innocent bystanders like me. Which reminds me, I’ve got a new hero: the guy running that big white crane. The precision of this crew was amazing, and when time is compressed their work on these wind turbines becomes apparent as clockwork that it is. I took some HD equipment with me from work so I could grab a time lapse video Too bad I don’t have room here to show it at 1080p!

Again, that crew was amazing to watch. I wanted to applaud after they got that second unit assembled; it was in such a cramped position that the crane operator actually had to roll the crane back a little bit on its tracks! I bet that made him nervous. In any case, both of the assemblies that I watched appeared to go without a hitch, and I’m sure it’s due to good planning and a talented crew. It was a real joy to be along for the ride, even at a safe distance. I stayed along the main road and chatted with the landowners whose land I was parked on. A representative from the company doing this work told me that these sites and the access roads leading to them are off limits to the public. Take note of that if you decide you want to see any of this action for yourself.

I took an HD video camera and my still camera up to the wind farm north of town Thursday to capture a time lapse of some turbine assembly. Look down a couple of posts and you can see that I knew there were a few ready for the final stages of construction, so I was confident that leaving work to hang out up north would be productive. I wasn’t counting on the pests, however. Here’s one of the time lapse clips (roll over the bottom of the image if you don’t see the playback controls):

There were little gnats or something swarming me from time to time, so early in the day I applied some insect repellent and felt confident the day would be hassle free. I hadn’t counted on them swarming my cameras, however. I haven’t had the opportunity to review the video time lapses I did, but the video above is my favorite time lapse from my still camera and I’m pretty ticked that it has bugs all over it.

Being in the video business, I’m no stranger to artifact removal; in fact, I did a bit of that earlier this week. I had some videos where the second camera operator poked the front of their camera into the shot a bit, and the boom operator (me, in one case) ducked the boom pole into the corner of the shot a couple of times as well. It was a hostile shooting environment, where that kind of thing happens. Anyway, I spent part of my week removing those kinds of things as well as some wire removal and even a pen that someone dropped right in the middle of the video. So removing a few bugs can’t be so hard, can it?

Actually, in this case, it’ll have to be a frame-by-frame job. I’ll do it, but I’m not sure when. Perhaps my stubbornness and the fact that I’m really tweaked about this will step up the timetable. I have to review the HD footage tomorrow, which I shot at 1080p resolution, but I still think the sequence above is my favorite unless I find a better one in the rest of my footage. If not, I’m in for some aggressive Photoshop. After I go through the rest of my photos and the HD video I’ll be posting some of it here…along with that Memorial Bridge thing I teased about earlier this week!

Update: I’ve been told by the company which assembles these big wind turbines that they don’t want people approaching the work sites, even if nobody is there working, for safety reasons. While the roads to these sites weren’t marked with any warning signs when I was there, they are not for public access. If you want a look at these sites, you must stay on the public roadway and do so from there.

My two year old wanted to go see the big windmills this weekend, so off we went. I never need much urging to hop in the truck and go careening off into the wilderness. Once he saw how big these things are in person, and heard how loud they are, he decided he didn’t need to get very close. But there was a surprise awaiting us, one which turned me into a little boy for a little while.

There are more wind turbines under construction out there, and it’s a pretty cool process. They assemble the tower, put the turbine building atop it, and bolt the blades to their hub before lifting the whole rotor assembly up in the air. That means you can see how big those things are in person. Very.

I looked around to make sure that there were no signs forbidding a closer look, then followed a section line road to get a peek. A few of the turbines’ blade assemblies were perched on the ground, weighted to keep them from being damaged in the wind. We didn’t go close enough to touch anything, just taking in the sheer size of everything from a short distance. In some cases, I stood on the top of the truck to take the photos, which PJ found amusing.

How’s this for a sense of perspective? I didn’t whip out a tape measure or anything, but I read somewhere that 80 feet is a typical length for one of these blades. With a radius like that, imagine how fast the tips are travelling as the blades rotate!

Here is a set of blades ready to be installed. Note the wild curvature to them. They’re very big and made of lightweight material. They’re so long that the roads out here have to be upgraded to accomodate the wide, sweeping turns of the trucks hauling them in. They travel one to a truck.

How would you like to be the guy who has to spin on and torque the nuts onto all those bolts? There’s a similar ring of them on the hub, which attach it to the turbine atop the wind generator structure. These have a very large diameter at the bottom; in fact, a short person could probably stand up inside that diameter. You know who you are.

It would be really fun to watch them lift one of these assemblies into place! It can’t be done on a windy day, which means that they’re going to have to be ready to go at the drop of the hat. Breaks in the wind don’t come very often around here.

Little boy, big world. I love taking my boys to go see things: airplanes, trains, big construction equipment, boats, cars, you name it. I’m going to help them to see all the cool stuff I write about here on the ol’ Blog, and in doing so I get to share in the joy of a little boy taking it all in. Boys, Daddy, camera, and world. What a combination.

I was out shooting some beautiful HD video today and had my camera bag along. Naturally I took the opportunity to grab my 47,000th photo through my trusty Canon. That way I could title this post after one of my favorite Thomas Dolby songs.

If this cow could talk, he’d say “at least my windmill works…” and then he’d be given his own daytime talk show.

The reason he’d be cracking wise is because the wind turbine standing behind him has apparently suffered some delamination on one of its blades. Owie.

Too bad they don’t make two-story “Out of Order” signs. You can see this damage all the way from Highway 83. I’d hoped to get a closer photo of this, but the access road is blocked with red DANGER tape and No Trespassing signs. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I honor those signs. It’s not just the law, it’s respectful of other people’s property.

The sky went through a lot of changes while I was up on the wind farm. It went from rain to nasty clouds to deep blue skies to multiple colors as the sun began to approach the horizon.

I used a polarizer to bring out detail in the sky. The results vary depending on your angle from your light source, in my case the sun. Thus I get a lighter shade of blue in the sky in this shot, as the sun was directly behind me.

It would have been interesting to see exactly how and when this blade failed. I bet it was a spectacular sight! If I were to offer a layman’s opinion, I’d guess that it happened while the turbine was stationary; otherwise it looks like the delaminated blade would have likely torn right off. In this case, it merely split. It may not have been pointing up at the time; the weight distribution of the blades was altered when it collapsed, causing the intact blades to balance toward the bottom.

I was really excited to get out tonight. I got to hang out with a friend who went with me, I got to see the clouds roll away and a very nice (albeit chilly) June evening take shape. I even got to do some running around with the camera after leaving the wind farm…but those photos will have to be posted later.

If you have Flash installed on your computer, and supposedly almost 100% of us do, then you have noticed that the banner at the top of my website rotates through a series of pictures. Some of them are repeats because I love to start a project. Finishing it is sometimes another matter. Well, I’m a little closer now with the above addition to the banner, showcasing some our state’s energy-related assets.

The dragline is from the Falkirk Mine, whose tour video I edited. In the middle is a wind farm, taken at sunrise north of Bismarck on a photo shoot for the Department of Energy and Reuters. And finally we have transmission lines, which are great for our power grid but sometimes a nuisance for a landscape photographer. Thankfully they can be photoshopped out when unwanted, and make a pretty neat subject when tried.

I’ve got some other ideas for thematic banners, and plenty of photos with which to go to work. Now all I need is more time, which grows more elusive each day…

Okay, it’s steam and not smoke…and there isn’t any fire in the sky. This time of year a clear river channel and a blast of cold air can combine for a pretty neat scene! The other day there was steam rising from the river, from some of the storm drains, and from various smokestacks.

This is some of the steam rising from one of the Heskett power plant stacks. It reminded me that images of ominous evil stacks belching forth black plumes of pollution are merely a tool of the environmentalists’ propaganda. Those are an anachronism, really. The industry continues to make great strides not only in extracting the most energy from the coal they burn, but from extracting as many pollutants as they can before they’re expelled into the air. Much of that innovation takes place right here in North Dakota’s famed “energy corridor.”

What you see rising from power plants these days is steam, not smoke. That’s a really common misconception. That’s also why you rarely see emissions from a power plant on a warm day. A friend of mine told me the other day that since the two power generating units at Heskett are slightly different, sometimes you’ll see steam from one and not the other because of the temperature difference of the two. I’m told I may be doing some more power plant work in the near future, so I look forward to another close look at the process!