Tag: cranes

Work Resumed on the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project This Week.

Work resumed on the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project this week.

2014 Commemorative Print Now Available

Double Rainbows Over Ohio River Bridges Project, Downtown Span Construction
Double Rainbows Over Ohio River Bridges Project, Downtown Span Construction

Today I am releasing a 2014 Commemorative Print of the Downtown Crossing to mark the progress that was made in 2014. I was lucky enough one morning last month to be at the right place at the right time to capture two rainbows over the tower for the downtown span. I think it is a fitting image for the past year’s progress and I hope my viewers agree.

I am accepting orders for prints in three sizes on .040″ aluminum ready for hanging. The sizes are 11″ X 14″ @ $109.00, 16″ X 20″ @ $239.00 and 32″ X 40″ @ $899.00. Interested parties can reach me through the Contact Form below for further information or to place an order.

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Walsh Construction has placed the first sections of bridge deck panels for the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville, Kentucky.

The First Structural Steel Girders For The Downtown Span are Installed

This post and the accompanying photos show how much progress has been made on the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville Kentucky.

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.

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

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.

 

Cranes As Far As I Can See….

Cranes As Far As I Can See....
Cranes As Far As I Can See….

Click on the image to enlarge it in another window.

I like this image because it shows how many cranes are being used to build the Ohio River Bridges Project. There are cranes on barges in the river and further back on the horizon there are more cranes building Spaghetti Junction. I was on the Indiana approach looking south into Louisville; I composed the image to take advantage of all the vertical elements in the scene.

I used my standard three frame bracket set and NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to create this HDR image. After merging them I returned it to Aperture 3 for color adjustments and sharpening.