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Mill around with your camera

Wendy Evans explains how to capture windmills and watermills

The countryside is dotted with examples of early technology in the form of wind and water-powered mills. Both types of mill used the power of nature to crank machinery that ground flour, pumped water or, in modern times, is used to generate electricity. We needn't concern ourselves with the bird-battering eyesores of today; what we want to photograph are the mills of yesteryear.

For windmills, that means capturing them as part of the landscape, rather than just a close-up shot. It's better to show them in the context of the local environment. You can also get inside some windmills, especially ones that still work, to photograph the various floors and machinery. Also, on windy days it can be interesting to take a long-exposure shot to blur the movement of the clouds and the sails going round.

For watermills it's somewhat different, as the buildings themselves tend to be anonymous square shapes made from bricks, so what to look for there is the water source and the great wheels that were driven by it. Some watermills were situated on rivers or fast-flowing streams that suit long-exposure shots, while others dammed the supply into a lake and used the height differential with a basin below to power the wheels at specific times. For these, you're looking for reflections outside and close-ups of the machinery inside or featuring the wheels.

Don't do this

This is an example of what not to do. Don't get too close and use a wide-angle lens (18mm here) to squeeze the mill into the shot as this creates significant distortion. Stand further back and zoom in. The main photo on the previous spread used a 32mm focal length.