Altahullion Wind Farm
Altahullion Mountain, County Derry, Northern Ireland, UK
25th Septenber 2005 at 14:45 (BST)
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© 2005 George Row, All Rights Reserved.
Caption
Altahullion is the largest wind farm in Ireland. It consists of 20 "Bonus 1.3MW" turbines each with a capacity to generate 1.3 Mega-watts. The full specification of these turbines is available as a PDF fileEach turbine has three 30m blades and is mounted on a tower 60m tall. Between them they generate enough electricity for 20,000 homes.
The panorama opens with a human figure to the left of the base of one of the towers. Click on the (-) button or use the Control key to zoom back and get an impression of the size of these windmills.
Altahullion Mountain has traditionally been used as a source of energy. It is blanketed in peat bog. In the past the energy was collected in the form of peat turf, cut from the hill-top, left to dry for most of the summer, then taken home to be burnt on open fires through-out the winter. The segment of the panorama when looking into the sun, shows a turf-bank in the foreground with turf stacked along it.
There is another VR of Altahullion that was taken on the same day.
The Very Ireland website carries many other VRs by George Row
Equipment
Taken with a Minolta DImage 7 digital camera, with a 7.2-50.8 mm f2.8 lens. Taken at a focal length of 7.2 (equivalent to 28mm). Mounted on a Kaidan Kiwi-L pano-head. Stitched with VRWorx 2.5.2
Behind the scene : how this panorama was made
This panorama was shot as two rows of twelve photographs. The camera was a Minolta DImage 7
{with a 7.2-50.8 mm f2.8 lens. Taken at a focal length of 7.2 (equivalent to 28mm). Mounted on a Kaidan Kiwi-L pano-head. Stitched with VRWorx 2.5.2} Each frame was shot using the camera's automatic exposure bracketing feature to create one exposed for shadow detail and one for highlight detail (2 stops apart).
These were then combined using the DRI Plug-in to create composite images with an extended dynamic range.
It is this combining of different exposures that has caused multiple images of the turbine blades. I thought that gave an effective impression of the movement of the blades so left it that way.
Each row of image was stitched using VRWorx and then the two resulting flat panoramas were combined using Photoshop. This was necessary in order to include the full height of the nearest turbine.
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