RogerBW's Blog

Too early this morning, I went to Wittenham to watch the demolition of the southern cooling towers at Didcot. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

Supposedly in order to try to avoid crowds, the exact time hadn't been announced, just a window of 3-5am (local sunrise was at 5.20). I turned up with a friend about 2am, to get a decent spot on the Wittenham Clumps, a little under three and a half miles from the towers. (Parking was provided by the Earth Trust, which is based just across the road.)

Obviously this called for reasonably serious photography, so I brought along the Pentax K10D with an 80-320mm f/4.5 zoom lens. I set it up on a tripod and sighted in on the towers; thanks go to John who lent me an infra-red remote release, so that I was able to trigger the shutter without touching the thing.

As the sky gradually got lighter, it became apparent that there were 500 or so people waiting for the shot.

The demolition firm had claimed they'd fire a maroon before the actual blast, but we didn't in the end get any warning at all, so while I saw the whole collapse (at just about 5am) I wasn't able to photograph all of it.

…and the rest is dust (at which point the lovely rolling thunderous sound arrived), and everyone going home.

Let's enhance that first shot of the towers falling, pushing brightness and contrast, and going to monochrome to get rid of spurious colour grain:

Here's some video taken by other people:

Fairly official-looking

Third party

I don't often do early mornings, but (as with the Midsummer Madness bike ride that I used to do in London) it's sometimes very pleasing to see the sky getting lighter and the transition from night to day.