WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant)

Having an assistant when shooting here is a must.The WIPP safely disposes of the nation's defense-related transuranic radioactive waste. WIPP is located in the Chihuahuan Desert, outside Carlsbad, NM. WIPP began disposal operations in March 1999. WIPP is a U.S. Department of Energy facility.

I was contracted by an engineering firm to document the underground disposal of the radioactive waste being shipped to WIPP from around the country. When I first received the call for this assignment, my first thought about the waste was that of old fuel rods or something like that. Where in fact, the waste takes the form of old gloves, tools, clothing and other items that may have been exposed to radioactive materials in the process of making nuclear weapons.

Shipments are received by truck from various places like, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Rocky Flats, Lawrence Livermore Nat. Lab, etc. WIPP has received over 6000 such shipments to date. This waste is stored underground about 1/2 mile down in the Permian Salt Formation. The disposal rooms are roughly 33 feet wide, 500 feet long, and about 15 feet in height.

The really radioactive stuff is placed into horizontal boreholes in the disposal room walls. The other less radioactive stuff is stored in the open rooms in barrels and other types of containers.

Shooting underground is no easy task! Conditions can run the gambit. Dirty, cold, hot, wet, dusty and down right miserable

Utility Switch Yard

I posted another You Tube video of a recent shoot for an annual report. I was shooting for a utility company at one of their coal fired power plants in Craig, Colorado.

The client was using some new technology to help detect the possible failure of transformers within their switch yard. If they are able to detect such failures before they happen, the company could not only save money, time and keeping their employee's safe from catastrophic failures.

Medicine Bow Wind Farm

I have just returned from an annual report shoot in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. I was shooting a wind farm for a client on mine. We left Denver at 7:00 am to shoot this assignment, we had a 3 hour drive to the location. With sunrise at 7:30 am, you can see that we where not shooting in the best of light.

Sometimes we have clients that do not want to budget for the amount of time that I feel is required to shoot an assignment. I would have preferred to have overnighted in Medicine Bow, allowing us the opportunity to shoot sunset as well as sunrise before returning to Denver.

I'm including a short video of our shoot, my assistant Erik shot this with my new Canon G9 point and shoot camera.

I've been shooting for 24 years specializing in annual report location work. More of my work can be seen at my http://www.tejadaphoto.com/.

Flickr Explore

Stopped by Strobist this morning and read the latest post regarding Flickr. Flickr has this stream called Explore in which they select images they think are really cool.

I followed the links on Strobist which took me to Flickr Explore, typed in my email address and got the following results. I had an 8, that is to say that Flickr thought 8 of my total images are really cool.

WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant)

Having an assistant when shooting here is a must.The WIPP safely disposes of the nation's defense-related transuranic radioactive waste. WIPP is located in the Chihuahuan Desert, outside Carlsbad, NM. WIPP began disposal operations in March 1999. WIPP is a U.S. Department of Energy facility.

I was contracted by an engineering firm to document the underground disposal of the radioactive waste being shipped to WIPP from around the country. When I first received the call for this assignment, my first thought about the waste was that of old fuel rods or something like that. Where in fact, the waste takes the form of old gloves, tools, clothing and other items that may have been exposed to radioactive materials in the process of making nuclear weapons.

Shipments are received by truck from various places like, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Rocky Flats, Lawrence Livermore Nat. Lab, etc. WIPP has received over 6000 such shipments to date. This waste is stored underground about 1/2 mile down in the Permian Salt Formation. The disposal rooms are roughly 33 feet wide, 500 feet long, and about 15 feet in height.

The really radioactive stuff is placed into horizontal boreholes in the disposal room walls. The other less radioactive stuff is stored in the open rooms in barrels and other types of containers.

Shooting underground is no easy task! Conditions can run the gambit. Dirty, cold, hot, wet, dusty and down right miserable

Light Painting

Have you ever tried light painting? This is a fun experiment particularly in this digital age. It use to be of course we had to wait for film processing to see our results. Now a days, we have the benefit of instant feedback.

This exposure was taken about 30 minutes after sundown. The shutter speed was 45 seconds long at a unrecorded f-stop perhaps f8.0. During this exposure, I walked into the frame carrying a 1 million candle power flashlight. I lit each of the stepping stone just for an instant as I walked up the gate. While still moving around, being careful not to stand in any one spot for to long. Remember, the shutter is open for 45 seconds, I never stand long enough to be recorded. While out at the gate, I washed the fence and gate with light. I hit each of the pots on the sides of the gate.

When light painting like this, I try to imagine the complete image in my minds eye as I paint. Staying focused on what your doing, will allow you the ability to chance your settings and timing (duration of illumination) in subsequent exposures.

Quite honestly, it only took about 10 tries to get the results shown here. I point this out because I want to stress to you, the importance of visualizing your image and staying focused. It's not that different than visualizing the effects of dodging and burning a darkroom print.