Whenever I have the opportunity to take a prolonged solo drive, like going back to see friends and family in Nebraska, I enjoy, as often as I’m able to, taking the long and winding route rather than something faster, and more direct, such as the interstate. I like to stop, stretch my legs, look around, and take a photo or two along the way. It helps pass the time while also giving me the chance to see swaths of natural beauty that might otherwise go flying by at 75 miles an hour.
One such route involves Highway 77 which winds through Kansas and, despite being built up over the years to the point where many long sections are now four-lane divided roads, still has a distinctly rural midwestern feel to it. While massive, modern wind turbines now tend to dominate the landscape it’s not uncommon to come across their wood-and-steel forebears such as the one you see here and, when such occasions arise, I enjoy attempting to capture them with my camera. I’ve shared some of these pictures here on Weekly Fifty before and I hope to continue doing so for years to come, as I do quite enjoy seeing these old windmills. My wife does too, and we even have a few windmill photos we have taken along Highway 77 printed and hung on our wall at home.
For this shot, which was somewhere south of Junction City, I used my Nikon D750 and 70-200 f/2.8 lens zoomed out to 70mm with an exposure of f/8, 1/1500 second, ISO 100. I initially took several photos at a much longer focal length such that the windmill filled more of the frame, but then backed off a bit to try something a bit different. In nearly all of the windmill photos I have taken over the years, I have tried to fill the vertical dimension with as much of the windmills as possible. It just kind of made sense to me: when taking a picture of a windmill, one ought to emphasize the windmill. And while that line of thinking isn’t necessarily flawed, it does leave out the possibility that there might be other equally compelling ways to compose such a shot. And so, I figured, might as well try something new and see what happened.
As my wife and I looked through the windmill photos she kept on returning to this one, and for good reason. The windmill piercing the sky like a church steeple is clearly the standout feature in the shot, but the picture is about so much more than that single structure. The huge sky, field in the foreground, fence receding into the background, and clouds in the distance all work together to showcase the sheer size of the midwestern prairie. It’s a photo of a windmill, yes, but it’s a complete composition containing so much more than just that one single subject.
I don’t know if this will end up getting printed and hung on our wall, but the more I look at it the more I appreciate how different it is from other windmill photos I have taken. I like that I took a minute to try something new, and I hope you enjoy it also.
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