CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

In September the first stage of the demolition of the decommissioned coal fired power station at Cockenzie along the coast in East Lothian took place. Today (17 December) the second and final stage of the demolition happened when the main building was taken down in a controlled explosion at 2pm. I went along to record the event that will transform this part of the coastline and set up my cameras in the same position as I shot on the 26 September. Here is the video from 17 December And here is the video from 26 September ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY VISITING THE ADVERTISERS ON THIS PAGE By clicking on the adverts you are helping support this blog - thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALL IMAGES ARE THE PROPERTY OF MACLEAN PHOTOGRAPHIC AND CA...

Today thousands of people lined the coast here in East Lothian to watch a familiar landmark disappear as the twin chimneys at the Cockenzie Power Station were demolished.  The coal fired station was built in the 1960s and was decommissioned in 2013.  The twin chimneys have been a familiar sight on the East Lothian coast for 50 years but at 12 noon today they were no more. The video was shot on a Fujifilm X-T1 with a XF50-140mm f2.8.  The video was set to full 1080P HD at 60fps so I could slow the video down by 50 percent in post production.  The video show the demolition of the chimneys and the turbine hall in real time and then after 1 minute into the video the demolition is replayed in slow motion. The still images were shot on the second X-T1 at 8fps to capture the chimneys coming down and to also have a before and after shot of the skyline.   The main power station building will be dismantled over the coming months and then the skyli...

Yesterday I spoke about using telephoto lenses and how they can be used for landscapes.  This got me thinking about zooms and prime lenses and how I do tend to reach for a prime lens over a zoom for most of my work.  There is nothing wrong with the Fujinon zooms, they are as good in the quality stakes as the prime lenses I own, but the primes are by their nature smaller and have a faster aperture. The three primes I tend to use are the Fujinon 35mm f1.4 (top image), Fujinon 18mm f2 (second image above) and the Fujinon 56mm f1.2 (third image below).  All three images were taken from the same position at Skateraw Harbour showing Torness Power Station lit up last night. All of the images were shot at 30 second at f11 on the Fujifilm X-T1, which was attached to the Manfrotto 190 tripod.   To demonstrate that zoom lenses are as good as primes here is a shot taken on the Fujinon 10-24mm f4 at 10mm.  The other lens is the Fujinon 55-200mm wh...

A little bit further down the coast to the east of Dunbar is Torness power station.  You can walk around the seaward side of the facility on the John Muir Way.  It certainly isn't the most beautiful spot in this part of the world but it is a highly visible landmark on this part of the East Lothian coast. Torness nuclear power station was the last of the United Kingdom's second generation nuclear power plants to be commissioned. Construction of this facility began in 1980 for the then South of Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB) and it was commissioned in 1988. For more information on Torness Power Station CLICK HERE Image taken on Fujifilm Finepix X100 and 23mm f2 lens ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG BY CLICKING THE GOOGLE ADVERTS It doesn't cost you anything to click on an advert but we get a small fee for every click thru from Google and this helps supp...