Shooting Challenge: 6 Power Shots

How do you convey power through photography? Here’s how six Giz readers interpreted this week’s shooting challenge. Can you spot the mother and son submissions?

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Tom Shao

The photo was taken on Tuesday, during my Easter break i visited home in Newcastle. These huge powerline towers dwarf surrounding residential housing. They were made the centre of fierce controversy a few years ago, where local residents who believed that living under high voltage lines increased their chances of cancer and rallied to get them taken down. But of course that would leave thousands of homes powerless. The towers still stand proud today.

Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8G
ISO 100
28mm
A: f/11
S: 1/640

Shot in RAW, with minor adjustments in iPhoto.

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Mitch Swan

On finding out this week’s challenge was power, my mother (Michelle Swan) and I were exited as we were co-incidentally heading to Talbingo for the weekend – home to the Tumut 3 – one of Australia’s leading renewable power stations. This particular facility produces power from the stored water in the Talbingo dam and unlike most other renewable power sources, hydro is able to produce electricity on demand during the peak hours of the day. What also makes this station interesting is that it is the first in Australia with the ability to pump water back up into the dam during off-peak periods (when power can be bought off the grid at a very, very low price from continuous power sources). I also wanted to pick this station as my subject because I had never seen a good photo taken of this station.

To take the panoramic photo, I mounted my camera on a tripod and took 6 photos with a panning motion with a Canon 600d, 18-55mm lens, f11, 1/80second and stitched it all together in Microsoft ICE.

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Daina Peet

This photo is a power cord plugged into a power board. Very “Power” related I think.

This photo was taken with a Canon DIGITAL IXUS 110 IS
The f-stop was f/2.8
The Exposure time was 1/20 sec.
The ISO speed was ISO-640
The Focal length was 5mm

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Iordan Kostadinov

I was over for the easter long weekend to Melbourne with my girlfriend. Took my brand new (to me) Canon 7D that I picked up from a small second hand camera shop near Shinjuku Station in Tokyo in February. Still finding my way around this beast but enjoying every minute. The trams are a mainstay of Melbourne and sparks keep flying on intersections. Raw power if i’ve ever seen it. Had some time to spare before heading out to the last night of the comedy festival so I staked out for about 20 mintues on a busy corner near the library. Got a few shots of these sparks but this is my favourite. A bit of retouching on Picasa3, and I ended up with this.
Canon 7D, 18-200mm IS (at 70mm for this shot), f/5.6, 1/200 sec, ISO 800

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Michelle Swan

This image illustrates some of the earth’s renewable power potential, the star trails capture the magnitude of the earth’s rotation while the foreground is taken from the Talbingo dam wall toward the reservoir. The Talbingo dam & power station are the largest in the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectic Scheme, which in turn accounts for 67% of Australia’s renewable power.

This picture was taken with 1hr 20mins worth of exposure. To do this I set up the camera on a tripod and with a shutter release cable took 167 sequential shots with identical exposure settings (manual mode, 30 sec exposure, f3.5). The resulting image was a composite of all of these pics processed through an application aptly called “startrails”.

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Jacob Rodrigo

I took this photo with a Nikon D80, whilst on a walk in Rye a touch before dusk. All I bothered about was focus, capturing the power lines contrast to the moon, with that beautiful shade of cerulean blue in the background. I didn’t quite notice the vignetting until I got back to the holiday house I was staying in. Honestly, I think it adds to the picturing, drawing you in to focus on the lines framing the moon.
Man’s electrical power attempting to constrain the Moon’s natural force, perhaps? I suppose it goes to show that a even your kit zoom lens can give a little artistic flair, inadvertently or not!


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