Alex (16, and new to photography) wanted to post this image and make his own statement about it. He would appreciate your comments.
Personally I do not believe in God, but after taking a picture like this I can't help believing God exists. When we reached the top of the hill and had a look around, I realised that this would be the only chance I would ever have to capture this, because there would never be another moment exactly like it. At no other time will things look exactly the same as as they did when I pressed the shutter; the light, the clouds and very soon the landscape. For me it's worth a 2 hour drive up rugged tracks just to be able to get a picture like this. To put 176 wind turbines in a landscape this heavenly is murder.
2 comments:
Alex: I feel the way you do about God, and when I see great beauty in the land and the sky I experience the same difficulty with non-belief that you do. You're right about the uniqueness of the moment, too. There will never ever be again (and there never ever have been) clouds and light just exactly like that. When you think about it, that's pretty amazing. You've caught it and preserved it for us all to see. Thank you.
Yes, it's murder - murder of a beautiful landscape - to put 176 wind turbines there. Did you know that each one will be about one-third as high again as the Christchurch Cathedral spire? The spire is 63 metres high, each turbine tower will be 100 metres high, and the base will be 4.2 metres in diameter. (There was a diagram with the measurements in the Press of Nov. 25 - 26.) They'll be visible over a huge area, way beyond the windfarm itself. And it's not just the turbines. There are all the roads that have to go in while they're being built and I suppose they'll be left for servicing them. Think what that is going to do to the ecology.
Besides the windiness, here's another reason they want to put them just there. This is a quote from an article by Bruce Ansley in the Listener of July 22: "Meridian likes the site, too. It's a long way from anyone else which, says Seay, reduces the impacts on people and has the collateral benefit of attracting fewer objections." (Alan Seay is the Spokesman for Meridian Energy.)
I think your Dad is right. Ways of producing power which have far less impact on the environment should be investigated. He has one ally in high places. The Press article mentions Morgan Williams, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. He published a report in November expressing concern that alternative models such as smaller-scale and community-owned windfarms like those in Denmark and Germany have not been explored. He thinks the Government is not providing the leadership it should about where windfarms should be sited and the scale on which they should be built.
Sometimes I think young people are much more clear-sighted than those of us who are older. They see straight to the critical point of an issue and make a commonsense judgement. When we're older we seem to get bogged down in all sorts of arguments made by people with different interests so that we find it hard to see just what is the most important thing. Yes, we are going to need more power (and let's start by not using any more than we really and truly need), but more power shouldn't be obtained by sacrificing a heavenly landscape like this which doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.
As to your image: I've had it sitting on the screen beside this as I type and I keep looking at it. I love the clouds with all their delicate shades of colour. I especially like the part not far above the hills where there is the ghostly suggestion of rays coming down through a rent in the clouds below that dark greyish-blue one. It looks as if they're lighting up those two distant snowy tops (although they probably aren't). I'd like to see some more of the images you made that day.
Alex: Maths was never my strong point. The towers won't be a third as high again as the Christchurch Cathedral spire, they'll be half as high again. So if you can imagine a windtower built next to the Cathedral, the cross at the very top of the spire would be only two-thirds of the way up it.
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