Tag Archives: beam

Big Steam Engines

In the days of steam, power was produced by huge machines.  If you needed a more powerful machine, you just made it bigger.  The huge wheels and pistons that resulted were most impressive.  The Henry Ford has quite a selection of these old steam engines of various designs.  The efficiency improved as they introduced multiple phases to the machines to recover more work from the output of the engine.  The big beams and pistons remained a theme, though.  The large brick structures and the associated metalwork have been nicely preserved and displayed.

Sunbeams Over Sandown Bay

The stormy skies over the Island were very active in the Sandown Bay area.  In the course of a couple of minutes, you could see the valleys on the opposite side of the bay have clouds wisp across them and then suddenly vanish from view entirely.  They could be back a few minutes later and then gone again.  The wind was blowing things through very rapidly.  For a few moments, there were some great beams of light punching through the clouds and illuminating the water beneath.  I was lucky to be able to get a few shots off before the clouds rolled through again and cut of the sun altogether.

Cloudy KC

wpid6644-AU0E9025.jpgOur journey home came through Kansas City.  We got the airport in plenty of time so were hanging around waiting for our flight.  The clouds were working their way across the sky and the beams of light that cut out of them at times could be quite attractive.  An airport ramp is not the best foreground for that type of shot but you don’t ignore something because of that.  Here are a couple of examples of how it looked.

wpid6642-AU0E9014.jpg