Category: Kentucky

Chris Bixenman and his “Battle Of My Life”

While photographing on the Ohio River Bridges Project in July I met Chris Bixenman as he repaired a piece of drilling equipment. We struck up a conversation and Chris shared that he was in “the battle of my life” because he has prostate cancer. The prognosis isn’t very good but he has a strong will to defeat it and recover his health. His constant companion, Minnesota , is a source of support for him and makes his days more enjoyable as they move from repair job to repair job around the Ohio River Bridges Project.

Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Montana.#2
Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Minnesota. #2

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Chris is employed by Walsh Group and is a member of Operating Engineers Local 181. He has continued to work because he needs to feel that even though he has cancer; cancer doesn’t have him. Chris has been to one of the major cancer treatment centers here in the US but they weren’t able to offer him much hope. Even with that news Chris hasn’t given up his fight. He has decided to try to get a type of treatment in Mexico that has shown good results but is not used in the US by American medical treatment facilities.

Evidently the treatment is very expensive and while Chris has some resources he still needs help paying for it. His wife has set up a fund for people who want to help him afford the treatment and he hopes to take time off in December to go to Mexico. It sounds like a long shot but he and his family are willing to take the risk in the hope that he can recover and live a comfortable life.

Anyone who wants to donate to Chris’s medical fund they can do so by sending their donation to the: Christopher Bixenman Cancer Fund, Bank of Buffalo, 2375 Lincoln Farm Road, Hodgenville KY 42748.

I’m sure that Chris and his family will be eternally grateful to any and all those who can help.

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Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Montana.#1
Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Minnesota at work on the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville Kentucky July 2, 2014

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Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Montana.
Wherever you see the Bixenman Equipment Repair truck you’ll see Chris and his wolf hybrid Minnesota.

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Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Montana at work on the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville Kentucky July 2, 2014 (#2)
Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Minnesota at work on the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville Kentucky July 2, 2014 (#2)

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Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Montana.#2 B&W Version
Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Minnesota.#2 B&W Version

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Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Montana.
Chris Bixenman and his wolf hybrid Minnesota.

Click on any image to open an enlarged view and slideshow.

Night Time Concrete Pour of the Tower Base at Pier Four of the Downtown Span

This article describes the process I used to create HDR photographs of a night time concrete pour for the Ohio River Bridges Project Downtown Span Tower base.

It’s Independence Day!

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BOOM!
BOOM!

Today is Independence Day here in the USA. Rather than go out to a fireworks show tonight I decided to share these shots from last year’s fireworks in Waterfront Park in Louisville.

Cosmic Dust
Cosmic Dust
Green Hornet
Green Hornet
Pink and Green Nucleus
Pink and Green Nucleus
Flaming Flower
Flaming Flower
A Star is Born.
A Star is Born.
The Crowd Goes OOH LA LA
The Crowd Goes OOH LA LA
Technicolor Dreamboat
Technicolor Dreamboat

Sunset on the Ohio River

Ohio River Sunset June 5, 2013 #2
Ohio River Sunset June 5, 2013 #2

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I find it amazing how much the sky will change during sunset. This first image was approximately 30 minutes after the sun had set and the sky was lit as if it were on fire. Once the sun was below the horizon the clouds mover further east and stretched high into the sky allowing the sunlight to diffuse even more. I was walking back down the Big Four Bridge ramp and couldn’t believe how wonderful the light had become. The way it cast a warm glow across the landscape, river and the handrail was irresistible and I stopped to capture this scene. The small section of blue in the upper right corner seemed a perfect complement to the overall orange cast in the scene and really enhanced the warmness of the oranges.

I processed this HDR image in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 using a three frame bracket set of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures. After merging them I applied the Balanced preset and boosted the Detail and Drama settings to Accentuated and Deep which really popped the texture in the sky and on the water. Upon returning the merged image to Aperture 3 I added some contrast and made a very slight change to the mid-contrast which further enhanced the texture in the sky, water and on the Big Four Bridge too. I adjusted the color channels to suit my intent for the image and finished with some minor sharpening and a small vignette.

Ohio River Sunset June 5, 2013 #3
Ohio River Sunset June 5, 2013 #3

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As I sated earlier the range of colors and the effect it has on a scene is simply amazing during sunset. I often photograph directly into the sun when it is necessary to my vision of an image. I was drawn to this shot by the way the orange sunlight was spreading out from the sun while the sky around it remained blue. I liked the way the sunlight reflected in the river and on the ironwork of the Big Four Bridge on the right. I elected to shoot through the handrail to emphasize the perspective in the frame and to capture the people strolling along the riverfront.

In this image the complementary colors are reversed from their relationship in the first image with blue becoming the dominant hue. Whenever I am shooting I like to keep the concept of complementary colors in mind as I compose an image. Since orange is directly across the color wheel from blue the overall effect is a complimentary color scheme that allows both colors to really pop.  Whether it is something as dramatic as a sunset or a subject within a landscape I keep the color wheel in mind and look for complementary colors that will add interest while not dominating the final image.

Instead of using all three frames from my bracket set for this image I decided to use only the underexposed and the normally exposed frames. I did this because a little boy walked into the frame during the overexposed shot. I didn’t want to go through the effort of masking him out of the shot so elected to try a two frame HDR. The resulting image had a broad enough dynamic range to gather shadow details and still retain detail in the sunset and clouds.

One additional note about these images before I wrap up; I decided to crop them into a more panoramic aspect ratio in order to give a more expansive feel to the final images. I find that landscape images often, but not always, benefit from a wider aspect ratio.

 

View from the North Tower of the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project

View from the north tower of the downtown span
Looking out on the job site from the north tower of the Ohio River Bridges Project.

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Howdy everyone. It’s been weeks since I last posted about my ongoing project to chronicle the progress of the Ohio River Bridges Project here in Louisville. I’ve been quite busy with several other aspects of my personal project of photographing the bridge building process and the men and women who are building it. When I began this project I had no idea how truly monumental and time consuming it would be.

The last bridge/construction project I worked on was much smaller and didn’t fully prepare me for the scope of a major civil engineering project such as the Ohio River Bridges Project. When I photographed the Big Four Pedestrian Bridge and the men who did it I was working with a crew that numbered less than thirty people. In contrast the Ohio River Bridges Project involves not only the main span across the Ohio River but also a complete realignment and reconstruction of the area known as Spaghetti Junction. A project of this magnitude requires hundreds of people to accomplish and really expands my personal involvement. In Spaghetti Junction there are over fifty bridges and overpasses that will be needed to connect the new bridge to the Interstates that converge in Louisville. While the downtown span will carry northbound I-65 it must also join I-64 and I-71in Spaghetti Junction.

I have had to learn how to pace myself and how to best record the progress being made. In addition to the photography challenges I face there is the need to catalog, process and organize the thousands of photographs that I have already taken. Over this past winter I discovered that I needed to greatly expand my storage equipment to accommodate the massive amount of images I am recording. I had to upgrade several hard drives and take control of the photos or face utter chaos as the project grew. I thrive on challenges and this project has been the largest challenge I have faced as a professional photographer.

I lost the first two months of 2014 to personal health issues that prevented me from getting out to the job site as much as I wanted. I also had to contend with the extreme weather that gripped Louisville and slowed the construction. That is all past me now and I’m back to shooting regularly. I have upgraded my storage media and improved my workflow to allow me to capture the images I need to tell the story.

This week I was able to get out on the river and survey the progress that has been made getting the piers drilled and in place. The northern tower is progressing well and the tower crane is being assembled on it. The two towers that make up the northern tower are already taking shape and it was possible for me to climb up the western one and get the image that begins this post. In the weeks to come I will be climbing higher on these towers to shoot the Ironworkers and Carpenters as they build them.