Category: Waterfront Park

Big Four Bridge at night

Waterfront Park Big Four Bridge at Night

Long time visitors to Speeddemon2 Photography know that I spent over a year and a half photographing the crew from T&C Construction as they converted the Big Four Bridge into a pedestrian bridge between Louisville’s Waterfront Park and Jeffersonville Indiana. At the time I thought that completing the bridge conversion was the final chapter in the building of Waterfront Park. Little did I know that it was simply another milestone in the plan by the non-profit Waterfront Development Corporation to give Louisville a signature park on the riverfront.

Big Four Bridge at night
Big Four Bridge at night

Not long after the bridge opened to pedestrians the folks at Waterfront Park launched a fund raising drive to light up the bridge with programmable LED lighting that would showcase the bridge at night. Now nearly two years after the first visitors walked up onto the bridge the Waterfront Development Corporation has once again surpassed expectations and finished the LED lighting project. The addition of these lights has really made the bridge a standout attraction for the city of Louisville.

Those of use who lived here in the 1970s fondly recall how the local FM Rock and Roll radio station WLRS would light the bridge with white light bulbs during the Christmas holiday season. At that time the bridge sat unconnected to either Kentucky or Indiana amid junkyards, ramshackle buildings, oil tanks and an asphalt plant. During the daytime our waterfront was a pretty ugly sight that greeted visitors to Louisville as they crossed the Ohio River on I-65’s Kennedy Bridge but at night, during the holidays, it was a magical transformation of light and form.

Thanks to the forward thinking of many people that image of Louisville has been erased and replaced with a truly amazing park. The way the bridge is lighted now really makes a statement about how beautiful this bridge is and how important it is to both Louisville and Jeffersonville. Now we have a wonderful park and can enjoy a view of the city that is simply amazing. The new lighting is capable of changing color and light patterns through programmed instructions. Not only that but there is also a sound system on the central sections that plays music which the lights are tied into and can change in time with the music.

Click on the image gallery to view these images in a larger light box slideshow.

All the images in this post are three frame brackets sets of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures that were merged into HDR images using NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. After merging them I then took the resulting HDR image into Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5 to finish processing it. I discovered that using this method really allowed me to show the way the light played across the bridge and filled the insides of many of the bridge girders.

All images in this post are available printed on .040″ aluminum using dye sublimation technology in either Gloss or Satin finishes. They are available in any dimension from 14″ to 96″ wide with an appropriate height

Use the form below to contact me for sizes and pricing.

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The First Sunrise of Fall 2014

The first sunrise of fall 2014 over the Ohio River Bridges Project construction site for the downtown span.

Dramatic Clouds in HDR

Last Saturday morning I went down to Waterfront Park for an event on the river. The sky was full of dramatic clouds that really captured my imagination. The weather was rather raw and the turnout was low so I decided to take advantage of the ominous looking clouds instead. I thought the clouds would be good candidates for HDR images so I shot three frame bracket sets of each scene.

I decided to process the bracket sets in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 first and then returned them to Aperture 3 for some contrast, straightening and color channel adjustments. I then took them into NIK Viveza and played around with some very minor tweaks to them. I liked the results and the way even minor adjustments in Viveza had great impact on the resulting images. I even took one version into Topaz B&W Effects where I applied an antique style effect that I created a few weeks ago for another series of images.

Click on any image in the gallery and a lightbox slideshow will open.

It’s Independence Day!

Click on any image to enlarge it in another window.

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