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Today’s images are of Frank Lobody, a mechanic for Walsh Construction, who travels from job site to job site throughout the US to handle heavy equipment repairs. Frank is a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 150 in Porter, Indiana. When I met Frank he was repairing a drill shaft for the BG-40 Drilling Machine being used in Louisville to drill into the bedrock for the bridge piers on the Ohio River Bridges Project.
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The bedrock on the Ohio River Bridges Project is very hard and sometimes the drill shaft breaks under the load of trying to drill over 30 feet into it. Once the bridge pier casings are placed through the soil down to the bedrock it is necessary to drill a socket 30 feet into rock to anchor the piers. On the Kentucky side of the river that means drilling almost 150 feet from the surface to the bottom of the socket.
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All three of these HDR images were processed from a three frame bracket set of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures using NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and Aperture 3 software.
Love the pictures and stories on Frank! I had to smile when I saw his hardhat. When we rebuilt LAP a few years ago for the new Escape it was a hardhat zone at all times, (something I was not accustomed to). So I learned 3 things….Millwrights (which I proudly am) where theirs backwards (bill in the back), the brown ones like his are smaller, lighter and more comfortable, and all the guys loved to collect stickers from the jobs and vendors to put on their hats….plain ones were for bosses…… Great work as always Nick…you have a gift.
Thanks Karen I too have seen the different ways that the trades use their hardhats. Ironworkers almost always have the smaller brown ones with their bill in back. I too see the sticker collections, it gives me insight into the person wearing it. For instance if they have a Harley-Davidson sticker I know we share a love of motorcycles. I’m building my own collection on mine too. I ask for the union stickers to place on mine alongside my own UAW Local 862 sticker. The first day I showed up after getting my UAW sticker on my hat an Operating Engineer told me he was glad to see that I had put my union affiliation on my hat for everyone to see. A few days later he and his oiler presented me with an Operating Engineers sticker. Once this project finishes I’ll have a hat covered in union labels.