Category: Louisville

Thunder Over Louisville 2018

Yankee Doodle's Dream
Yankee Doodle’s Dream

Thunder Over Louisville, is the annual kickoff event of the Kentucky Derby Festival. The event is an airshow and fireworks display in Louisville, Kentucky. It is held each April, two weeks before the first Saturday in May, which is the day the Kentucky Derby takes place.

The fireworks display is the largest annual fireworks display in North America and started in its current location along the Ohio River in 1991 with fireworks, and the annual air show was added in 1992.

The fireworks show starts at 9:30 PM, along with a synchronized soundtrack through PA and radio. An average of 625,000 people have attended each year since 1997, lining the banks of the river in Louisville, and across the river in Jeffersonville and Clarksville, Indiana.

Just before sunset eight 400-foot barges are towed into place on both the east and west sides of the Clark Memorial Bridge launch the fireworks, provided by Zambelli Fireworks Internationale, more fireworks are sent up from the bridge, as well as spectacular streams of fireworks cascading from the bridge deck, that symbolize Louisville’s location at the Falls of the Ohio River. The display goes on for nearly 30 minutes before culminating with a grand finale that creates the sounds of rolling thumder for several minutes.

I have been attending and photographing the Thunder Over Louisville fireworks show, since it began in 1991, from the Louisville waterfront. In 2018 I went across the river from Louisville and shot from a location beneath the John F. Kennedy Bridge and Abraham Lincoln Bridge on the riverbank in Jeffersonville, Indiana. I chose this spot because it allowed me to frame the scene with the Kennedy bridge overhead, the Louisville waterfront in the background and the silhouettes of the people in the foreground on the Jeffersonville, Indiana river bank.

I shot this year using a Nikon D7000 on a tripod using a cable release with the camera set to Aperture Priority and the bulb setting. Instead of determining a shiutter speed in advance I used a trial and error approach that included me counting down the seconds that I held the shutter open. I set the ISO to 100 and varied the aperture from f14 to f4; ultimately I settled on f6.3 which allowed me to use around 1.5 to 3 second exposures though a few times I used 15 to 30 seconds. When I saw, after a few test frames, that everything from five to fifteen seconds captured my vision for the scene; I simply adjusted the length of time based on my feeling for the amount of light that the moment called for. Though not very scientific but I found this method worked exceptionally well and allowed me to capture many more usable images than I had over the years of photographing fireworks.

 

Sunsets on the Ohio River

Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy Bridges at Sunset

Earlier this week I went down to Waterfront Park to shoot the sunset from the Big Four Bridge. We have been having a lot of rain this winter and sunsets haven’t been very interesting so when I saw that maybe the clouds were going to be colorful I thought I’d give it a try. January sunsets aren’t usually very intensely colorful but the evening offered some nice color.

Waterfront Park Swing Garden

Lincoln and Kennedy Bridges

Lincoln and Kennedy Bridges in Black and White.

2015 Ohio River Bridges Project Commemorative Print

2015 Commemorative Print Now On Sale
2015 Commemorative Print 

Click on the image to enlarge it in a new window.

Today I am releasing my 2015 Ohio River Bridges Project Commemorative Print of the nearly completed  downtown span in time for you to get it before Christmas. It is available in two sizes 13.25″ X 10.5″ size is $100 and the “20 X 16” size is $230. the finished ready to hang print is on .040″ Aluminum with mounting black attached.

The men and women building the Ohio River Bridges Project downtown span are nearly finished and in just a few days the first vehicular traffic will be allowed on the new bridge. On Saturday December 5, the public will be given the opportunity to walk out on the bridge and see the result of two and a half years of construction.

Being able to be a part of this project is one of the most rewarding things I have done in my photographic career. The decision to photograph the construction is also the most ambitious single project I have undertaken in over forty years as a photographer.

I have seen the bridge emerge from the river as the towers were constructed, then seeing the first steel girders installed, seeing the cable stays as they were installed to suspend the bridge across the Ohio River and just last week being there as the final pavement was laid in place.

I have witnessed first hand the dedication and pride that every tradesperson brought to the job. There were many long days where they worked from sunup until late in the night to make sure that the job was done correctly and on time. Along the way I have made many new friends in all the trades that it takes to accomplish something of this scale.

As the embedded photographer it has been an honor to be a part of this incredible addition to the Louisville infrastructure. As the project winds down I will miss many of these men and women who will now move on to other jobs as the “Build America”.

All orders received before December 12, 2015 will be ready for local delivery before Christmas. Shipping is available for orders from outside the Louisville area.

 

On Top of the Tower Four Crane with Marcus Jones

A few shots from my last trip up on the Tower Four crane. The crane is down now and Marcus has retired to Arizona. It sure was fun to be up there with him and to get a chance to see the world from his vantage point.

The Ohio River Bridges Project Downtown Span at sunup #2
The Ohio River Bridges Project Downtown Span at sunup #2
Inside the tower crane cab with Marcus "BigIron" Jones.
Inside the tower crane cab with Marcus “BigIron” Jones.

 

Looking south over the Kentucky approach to the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project.
Looking south over the Kentucky approach to the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project.

 

Looking north from inside the tower crane mast on pier four.
Looking north from inside the tower crane mast on pier four.

 

 

Looking northwest from inside the tower crane mast on pier four.
Looking northwest from inside the tower crane mast on pier four.

 

Marcus "BigIron" Jone Operating Engineer on tower four tower crane deck looking east upriver on the Ohio River.
Marcus “BigIron” Jone Operating Engineer on tower four tower crane deck looking east upriver on the Ohio River.

 

Looking east from the motor deck on the tower crane on pier four.
Looking east from the motor deck on the tower crane on pier four.

 

Looking over the top of the tower crane on pier four at the Louisville skyline.
Looking over the top of the tower crane on pier four at the Louisville skyline.

 

Marcus Jones taking my picture on top of the tower crane.
Marcus Jones taking my picture on top of the tower crane.

 

Looking down the boom of the tower crane.
Looking down the boom of the tower crane.

The Ohio River Bridges Downtown Span August 24-29, 2015

The Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project. HDR Version
The Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project. HDR Version

Last week the Ohio River Bridges Downtown Span grew another 180 feet in length. The cable stays on Tower Five were completed and the scaffolding to the top of the towers was removed. One of the cranes being used to build the bridge structure blew an engine but that didn’t keep the structural gang from completing the building of another 45 feet of bridge.

The photos in this post are both three frame HDR mergers and single frame images. In all cases the image was first adjusted for sharpness and color saturation in Adobe Camera Raw followed by a trip into Photoshop CS5 for lens correction when needed. I also used Topaz Clarity to bring out the texture and contrast which I applied to a separate layer; in several cases the opacity of the Topaz Clarity layer was reduced to between 25 -75%.