Windpark Hamwarde

Windpark Hamwarde is a unique little hidden gem where a pair of soaring wind turbines stand on either side of a little country lane, Dorfstraße, out in the middle of farmland. They went up over the winter of 2023 and were switched on in June 2024, which makes them the newest thing in a landscape that hasn't changed much otherwise. The village down the road has carried a windmill on its coat of arms for a long time, and a real one stood on a hill here until 1950. This is flat, open country, so the turbines can be seen from a long way off. That gives you a variety of ways to capture them. You can use any of the local country roads or one of the field tracks and experiment with using a long lens. That will compresses the pair together and stack them against the rich blue sky. Up close, the narrow country lane runs straight between the two and sets up symmetry with the road as the leading line. The blades will need either a fast shutter to freeze them or a slow one to smear them into a disc, depending on your shooting style. Low sun turns them into clean silhouettes against an unbroken horizon, with nothing in the way at either end of the day. Whatever's growing in the fields changes the foreground throughout the year, so the same frame in May and August looks nothing alike. Everything around them is working farmland that is privately owned, so stay on the road and the marked tracks. Dorfstraße is narrow and quiet with no real parking, so pull well off and keep the field gates clear. (Hamwarde, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany)