Tag: bridge construction

The Day Begins When The Crew Boat Arrives

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Crew Boat Picking Up Workers At the Start of The Workday.
Crew Boat Picking Up Workers At the Start of The Workday.

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Each morning after the crew meets to go over the day’s activities and assignments many of them are transported to their worksites by Lee the crew boat operator. I have learned that Lee has a good handle on what is taking place at all the pier locations on the river, he know when something significant is going to happen and often directs me to interesting activities throughout the day.

I chose this image to show Lee’s boat arriving to carry the workers to their jobs for the day. I liked the way the boat’s wake smoothly rippled across the river and the contrast of the safety vests on the workers with the deep shades of blue and green in the sky and river. Seeing the scale of the project is always difficult but whenever there are people in the scene it becomes clear what a monumental undertaking this is.

I shot this in HDR and processed it using NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and Aperture 3.

 

Concrete Pour Equipment

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Concrete Pump Boom
Concrete Pump Boom

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This image shows the concrete pump boom transferring concrete to a pier pour in the middle of the river. The concrete is first transferred from the delivery trucks to the concrete pump which is sitting on shore. The concrete pump then pushes the wet concrete through the large pipe on the boom to the concrete placement workers who direct it’s placement in the concrete form in the river.

I chose this composition to emphasize the length that the material must be transported in order to make the piers in the river. I shot a three frame bracket set of -2, o and +2 EV and then processed the final image by merging them in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. After merging them and applying some basic tone-mapping adjustments I returned the image to Aperture 3 for final processing.

Concrete Vibrator Operator at Work During the Pier Pour.
Concrete Vibrator Operator at Work During the Pier Pour.

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In this image the vibrator operator is using a control box he is wearing around his waist to vibrate the wet concrete and eliminate any air pockets that may have formed as the concrete was placed in the form. The metal rebar that he is standing inside will connect the next pice of concrete to this base after additional forms are attached as the tower base rises out of the river. This particular concrete pour required 53 truck loads of concrete, 537 cubic yards of material, and took nearly an entire workday to complete.

This image is also a three frame bracket set processed with NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and Aperture 3.

Louisville’s New Downtown Bridge

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Waterfront Park during the Downtown Bridge construction, June 27, 2013
Waterfront Park during the Downtown Bridge construction, June 27, 2013

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Work has begun on the Downtown Bridge carrying I-65 across the Ohio River from Louisville. The impact on Waterfront Park should be minimal because the Waterfront Development Corporation had the foresight to prepare a place for it to cross the park. The Waterfront Development Corporation made sure to keep any major component of the park out of this area in an effort to accomodate the bridge and still have a world class park along the Louisville waterfront. This type of forward thinking is the hallmark of the Waterfront Development Corporation which has returned the waterfront to the citizens of Louisville as the “Commons” that the city’s founders envisioned.

As with the Big Four Bridge project I am excited to see and photograph the changing face of Louisville as it continues it’s march into the future. Over the course of the next two years I will be following the construction and the people making it happen. After shooting the Big Four Project I have discovered how much I enjoy construction projects and will certainly be following this latest engineering feat as the work progresses.

I shot this image in the part of the day that most photography “experts” would say to put the camera away. The conventional thinking is that midday light is too harsh and the only time to shoot landscapes is during the “golden hours” or the “blue hours”. I don’t think that is necessary and subscribe to the belief that even when the sun is high in the sky there are plenty of good photo opportunities if one will only open one’s eyes and mind to the possibilities. This particular day the sky was full of interesting cloud formations as a low pressure front was pushing in from the south and colliding with a high pressure front from the north. Had the sky been empty I might have chosen another framing to show the park and construction project.

The image was created from a three frame bracket set using +2, 0 and -2 EV. I first took all three RAW images into NIK Sharpener Pro where I applied some initial sharpening. I then merged the three shots in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and applied the Deep 2 preset before returning the merged image to Aperture 3 where I applied several adjustments to saturation and luminance in an effort to tone down the colors slightly. I then straightened and cropped the image and applied the final sharpening.