29 December 2007/ cloud

This photo was taken on a windy night in April 2007 at the El Segundo Power Station. A few times prior to this I had tried shooting long exposures of the smoke coming from the smokestacks of the Scattergood Power Station (which is also in El Segundo, CA) around sunset with mixed results: it turns the smoke into an interesting smear, but one that's a little too thin and diaphanous. Here, though, the lights from the power station help to consolidate the cloud into a more discernible figure—but they also kind of make it look less like smoke (actually, it's really just steam) and more like flame, which I'm not that happy about. Anyway, even though I was shooting this from a public street I got stopped by the police, who claimed that ever since 9/11 it's against the law to photograph power plants...which, if true, is just ridiculous.