Timelapse Coal Power Plant on Vimeo

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This is a compilation of timelapse videos I shot during December of 2009 and January of 2010. The music was taken from the trailer for Kubric's "The Shining". This is a Mid American Energy power station: located south of Council Bluffs Iowa.

Equipment:
Canon 5D mkii, 70-200mm IS 2.8L, 16-35mm 2.8L

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Credits

586 Likes

Monobanda
1 week ago
Alan August
1 month ago
justinas Pukys
1 month ago
Rob Pollard
2 months ago
Григорий Карпов
2 months ago
vincent
2 months ago
Mike Tully
3 months ago
Ghostface
3 months ago
James Thomas
3 months ago
Becky Bartek
4 months ago

Tags

der gaertner 2 years ago

wow! these pictures got me. fascinating and scary at the same time. the music fits too. (what is it?)
7D or 5Dmrk2 i guess.
cheers
tom
Swedish Kiwi 2 years ago

The music sounds the same as the one used in the teaser trailer for "2012", although that music apparently was taken from the trailer for "The Shining".
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

You're right! It's the "river of blood" trailer from "The Shining". I thought it worked so well.
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

der gaertner, The entire video is made from still images shot with the 5D and 5Dmk2. Thank you for your comments.
Gavin Owens 2 years ago

Powerful stuff. It's hard to belive that we are still building these coal burning plants today. This international emergancy seems not to be capturing the peoples imaginations as much as it should. Fear of the cost I suppose.
Menacing music works beautifully and very nice timelapses.
G
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

Thank you for your comments. What amazes me is that few seem to know the power plant is even there; and for those that do know it's there: it fails to make an impression.

As a photographer it's wonderful: I'm guaranteed an awesome spectacle whenever temperatures fall below 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is seems infinitely dynamic. It's appearance depends on the amount of energy being used at any given moment; the time of day; the light available, be it from the sun or moon; the speed and direction of the wind; I could go on.
Ty Frey 2 years ago

How do you stay warm when you stand next to the camera? Or do you just leave your cameras out and come back later?
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

I stay warm by staying in my truck. Usually I set up my camera outside and hurry back the truck. On cold enough nights I'll set the tripod up inside my truck and shoot out the window. At 17 below 5D batteries last only a couple hundred shots.
Paxson Woelber 2 years ago

Not to start the age-old rivalry or anything... but I've taken 1000 continuous shots with my Nikon D5000 at around zero several times. I live in Alaska and shoot outdoors all winter (ESPECIALLY when it's unbelievably cold out, because of all the amazing optical effects) and the Nikon batteries really seem to do well with extreme cold. Just something to keep in mind if you do this often.
ArtsyFartsyTim 2 years ago

so cool, man. And, shit, you have quite a following. Look at how many views this thing has already. wow
Infra Blue 2 years ago

Cloud maker....
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

That it is. It blows my mind!
Tom Hackbarth 2 years ago

nice work
not only is it cool to watch,
but it also sends a message/warning
Videofronta 2 years ago

Cool!
Matt Pringle 2 years ago

Superb work. Stunning video and great accompanying sound.
MILapse 2 years ago

freeeky/beautiful very interesting work!
edvard brun 2 years ago

Very compelling vid - the smokestacks belching, and the railcars (full of coal, I'm guessing) at around 1:15 really make for a powerful visual statement...
ramius5th 2 years ago

Co2 "mon amour" ...
ArtsyFartsyTim 2 years ago

Holy shit you have a following
Jeremiah Lemon 2 years ago

For you idiots that think this is sending a message, what you are seeing is water vapor from the cooling towers, you are not seeing polution coming out of smokestacks.
JG 2 years ago

:-O wow, brains out there ;-)

Yes, most of that "smoke" is just vapor.
Stephen Gentle 1 year ago

The tall ones are smokestacks - what you are seeing is the hot CO2 emissions condensing the cold air and making steam.

So it's not exactly the pollution (that's invisible) but a lot of it is the direct result of the CO2 exiting into the cold air.
Mark McClellan 2 years ago

Nice work. Been wanting to try out time lapse myself. How did you accomplish the pans and zooms? Were they done in post or do you have a slider/rail system?
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

Thanks. The pans were done in iMovie.
Steve Block 2 years ago

This is very cool looking. I think the vapor coming out of the stacks is actually a result of the pollution control equipment (I'd need to check with some coal guys to be sure), and of course the cooling towers put off a lot of vapor too.

But who cares! It's neat looking and I like it.
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

To your remark, "But who cares! It's neat looking and I like it. " My sentiments exactly!

Thank you
Paxson Woelber 2 years ago

I can't help but think that, if you cut out the chimneys themselves and just focused on the clouds, and paired that with a more triumphant or beautiful soundtrack, it would create a totally different experience.
ICTV Victoria 2 years ago

Even if you were making a "political statement" -- that would be OK too. There's nothing wrong with combining art and saying something that needs to be said.
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

:-)
Artur Kiraga 2 years ago

i'm not a coal hater , but the coal plants in my country don't make as much of this cloudy-thingy :)
GoodListener 2 years ago

Its a shame that all that waste energy is not somehow captured. There is enough energy escaping from that plant to run a tractor trailer load of stuff somewhere.
Adam Barnett 2 years ago

Personally I would've liked it even better had it been a political statement haha ;). Good job!!! Really cool looking.
G3 2 years ago

I wish we could suff those chimneys full of criminals and reduce the jail overcrowding. Better yet, burn the criminals and politicians.
eyeBOX 2 years ago

Really, really cool..
Columbia Productions 2 years ago

Nice video! I shot at a plant in Iowa this summer while working there. Unfortunately, all I had at the time was a crappy SD1000 Powershot and limited access inside the plant. I've posted it on my videos.
rickflick 2 years ago

Well made. I would suggest that your intention to make it purely artistic is belied by the subject itself and the music - which seems ominous.
Pepe Lange 2 years ago

I love that,
May I ask: how did You timelapse? Record a film and speed it up ar take sequences of photo?
Pepe
Jeff Grewe 2 years ago

This was made from stills. In most cases I was shooting at one frame a second.
Alejandro Iborra 2 years ago

Excelent !!!
Garry B 2 years ago

Great footage.The unnatural giving us beautiful surprises.
Check out the Photopraphy of Edward Burtynski, he has been capturing this strange beauty for quite awhile.
Thanks
Marcel HD DeCruyenaere 2 years ago

Very cool images! Pun intended! Glad you and your cameras survived those freezing temperatures. Having gone into my truck to warm up while shooting in Canadian -20 temps, I know what it is like to have you, your fingers, and your camera freeze up to make some nice photography!
Ray Gearhart 2 years ago

Very nice!

On a side note, it looks like nasty smoke but it's really mostly harmless steam/fog created by cold temps.
Kanagalingam Gnanalingam 11 months ago

I totally agree with you that a good is really mostly harmless steam/fog created by cold temps and any steam released from the plant as well! Anyway very good and great visual. Thanks for posting
Scott Gribble 2 years ago

I don't see it as propaganda. besides global warming to total BS anyway.
rrain 2 years ago

Hauntingly beautiful and grotesque.
Deanna Wirth 2 years ago

Jeff this is brilliant! Love the imagery,the music and the message. My baby brother is a coal miner in Utah and is exposed to this and worse everyday however in the same breath it gives us the power we enjoy everyday as well as provides a good living and benefits for his family.
Can't wait to have my trees liberated, it was great to meet you I am also sending your number on to my mom they need tree work done as well.
Michael Thorner 2 years ago

Carcinogenic smoke filled with mercury. Yay!
Carbon emissions clogging our airways. Whee!
Accompanying dissonant sound design with ominous ascending notes to suggest imminent peril. Yay!

"I did not make this video to make a political statement." After watching this clip, that is the (unintentionally?) funniest, most absurd thing I've read all day. Of course you're making a political statement. A most humane one at that.

It's incredible that such a horrible thing can look so beautiful aesthetically. But no one should be duped into thinking that what you've captured is anything other than apocalyptical. It begs the question though: what can the individual do to stop it?

Excellent, important visual capture.
Kanagalingam Gnanalingam 11 months ago

You can always go for Hybrid plants with solar and wind Generation to reduce the use of polluting COAL. If there is some Large Hydro can also serve as buffer at time when Sun and wind is not there or if they are low. Totally the use of coal is reduced! Nuclear also has proved its taste lately in Japan.
Michael Thorner 2 years ago

You may not have aimed to make a political statement in your work, but you did, by shooting what you shot, and by accompanying what you shot with an ominous, dissonant, upwardly ascending, scaled sound design. Personally, I think you knew what you were doing by juxtaposing the sound with the images. Either way, it's very effective.
BASSAM MSSALATIE 2 years ago

wow great complete work and vision .
how could you make camera pan during timlelapse
i noticed that in several shots especially at sec 27th. ??
Spencer Black 2 years ago

Killer piece Jeff, I really like the haunting aspect of this piece and more specifically the coal train moving in it's repetitious movements worked really well in TL. Hopefully the cold temps help keep security guards and police away. Once when I shot near some smoke stacks from public property I was almost arrested for being a "terrorist photographer".

Awesome work!
Jeff Grewe 1 year ago

Yes, photography and the law don't seem to mix. I've had an encounter of my own...

Thanks Spencer!
Mike Meier 2 years ago

Very nice. I see awesome engineering in those shots. Plants that big are marvels in themselves. Still, even though a lot of the smoke is probably steam, there's still a scary ugliness to it all as well.
Evan Norris 2 years ago

May I ask what program you are stitching them together with? Premiere? Final Cut? ???
Jeff Grewe 1 year ago

Made in quicktime. Edited in iMovie09
Norman Grinvalds 1 year ago

I work at that Power Plant. What you see is water vapor. The plant is monitored closely for emissions by the IDNR (Iowa Deparment of Natural Resources). The new Unit #4 has the lowest emissions in the Nation for coal fired plants of items such as sulfur dioxide, NOx emissions, and even mercury. We have activated carbon to remove mercury. The stack is monitored by Continuous Emission Monitors (CEM's).

The largest amount of water vapor (condensing in the very cold air, can't see any of this in the summer months) comes from our cooling tower. It will evaporate around 6000 gallons of water a minute to turn the hot steam back into water in the condenser (more in the hot summer). Coal is made of 30% moisture on average. This moisture is released into the air after combustion. The color of the emission is the important factor. It is white. Same as a cloud.
Jeff Grewe 1 year ago

Thank you Norman.
Kanagalingam Gnanalingam 11 months ago

If you use 30% moisture COAL at this great plant please remember you are wasting the very good part of heat from coal in converting moisture to steam at that high exhaust temperature at the chimney and supplying the latent heat for the steam generation which is wasted. So more moisturized Dirty COAL will be used by this plant. What a waste of costly polluting energy source. Try to have some renewable hybrid added.
Norman Grinvalds 1 year ago

Jeff Grewe

I wanted also to compliment you on your artistic talent and composing the time elapse video with the erie music.
David Wogan 1 year ago

That's a lot of steam.
Kanagalingam Gnanalingam 11 months ago

Agree but is waste of the steam and Energy! Energy is wasted in heating the 30% moisture in the coal and supplying the latent heat all drived from the Dirty COAL with all the ash and other polluting poisonous gasses emitted
Teo Karakatsanis 1 year ago

Very nice..