Bog Oak at Altahullion Wind Farm
Altahullion, Wind farm County Derry, Northern Ireland, UK
Saturday, August 8, 2009, 14:15 BST
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© 2010 George Row, All Rights Reserved.
Caption
The panorama opens looking down at the stump of a bog oak. Its age will be somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000 years. Bog wood is a rare timber which is revealed as a by-product of turf cutting. Altahullion Mountain was (and mostly still is) covered by a blanket peat bog. For generations local people cut turf from this bog to use as fuel. This turf cutting has revealed many oak stumps such as this one.
The wood has been preserved as a result of the unique conditions of the peat bog. The wood becomes waterlogged which keeps it free from oxygen and sunlight which would cause it to decay.
Now standing all around it are wind turbines. Altahullion is now host to the largest wind farm in Ireland. It consists of 29 "Bonus 1.3MW" turbines each with a capacity to generate 1.3 megawatts.
Each turbine has three 30m blades and is mounted on a tower 60m tall. Between them they generate enough electricity for 30,000 homes.
A framed print of this photograph is available as part of a collection of
Irish Photo Gifts
Other panoramas of Altahullion and of other sites in County Derry on veryderry.com
Location
Lat: 54° 57' 57.02" N
Long: 8° 2' 33.65" W
Elevation: 250
Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.
Equipment
Shot with a Canon EOS 5D, Zenitar 16mm fisheye f/2.8 lens. The camera was mounted on a Kaiden Kiwi panorama adapter on a Manfrotto 190XDB tripod.Horizontal photographs were taken at 60° angles and also a ground and sky shot. Each "shot" consisted of three bracketed exposures.
A total of 27 separate images were combined using Hugin in order to achieve this High Dynamic Range-type result.
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