The biggest source of energy in our world rises behind one of humanity’s own attempt to capture energy from the air.
Today is the first day of Spring (Imbolc in the old pre-Christian calendar, and latterly St Brigid’s Day). Yesterday, as the sun announced the last day of Winter, it rose over the Sliabh Aughty mountains and silhouetted the wind turbines at Derrybrien (at least it did if you were standing at the diving board at Salthill, as I was) - another picture here.
While I was at the diving board, I set up another camera to take a set of timelapse images of the sunrise. The camera was set to take in a wider view (and I had to adjust the exposure and the view a couple of times during the capture – hence the ‘jumps’). Video on Vimeo here or on Youtube (it’s the same vieo, whichever you choose).
The image above was taken with a Canon 40D fitted with a 100-400mm zoom (so the effective focal length was around 600mm). As with all shots of the sun, I set the camera to Liveview so I wasn’t looking directly at the sun through the viewfinder. The timelapse was taken with a Canon 5D and 17-40mm wideangle lens fixed to a tripod set to take an image every 20 seconds.
Great scene, John.
Just on a technicality – wind energy comes from the suns heating of the air at the equator and in turn produces wave energy. Along with the solar energy stored in plants, this means that most forms of renewable energy come from the sun – tidal and geothermal being exceptions. As we know from our leaving cert days, all energy in the universe is constant or finite, so even though capturing the sun’s energy is considered renewable and infinite, it too will some day become exhausted. Luckily, we won’t be around to see it. Here the lecture endeth.
Keep up the good work – Steve
great colours, sky, clouds and rising sun! Lovely.
Hello John Good to know we said “adieu” to winter already here in Ireland. The winter lasts a little longer in Poland for example, where we need to wait until 21 of March to call it a day. Love to visit your site, especially that I started to share same passion for photography since a year or two. Cannot even think of visiting Galway without a camera in my hand. There’s a lot to learn of course yet, but this is what makes it even more interesting. Thanks for sharing your photos with us. Good luck.
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