A short article about a 1952 International Harvester COE Rat Wrecker being built by Sam Humston in Louisville, Kentucky
Tag: hdr photography
Long Exposure, HDR Images Of The Night Time Concrete Pour For The Plinth On Pier Four
This article is about using Long Exposure and HDR techniques to emphasize movement while taking advantage of high dynamic range photography.
Exploring and Building Presets In Topaz B&W Effects and NIK Analog Pro Plugins
This post looks at using Topaz Software with various NIK Software to create your own plugin presets for HDR photography.
Abstracts and Close-ups From the Ohio River Bridges Project Construction Site
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When I am out on the job site shooting I like to include abstracts and close-ups from the construction site in my workflow. I find the visual elements of a pile of bolts, an impression left by a tire tread and manmade vs organic shapes very interesting. As a photographer I am very attuned to seeing art in the mundane day to day elements that surround me when I’m in the field shooting and strive to share that beauty with the viewers of my images.
The bolts in the image above are used in the assembly of the caisson in the background. I shot these as a three frame bracket set and merged them into a single HDR image using NIK HDR EFex Pro 2. After merging them and applying the Balanced preset I returned the merged file to Aperture 3 for final adjustments to color, sharpness, contrast and saturation.
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Due to the need to capture images throughout the workday I often find myself shooting in some pretty harsh lighting conditions which I compensate for by using bracketed exposures and HDR processing. By capturing a three frame bracket of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures I am able to gather detail in the highlights and shadows and merge that data in my HDR software of choice NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. Generally my merger procedure is to apply the Balanced preset with as little anti-ghosting as possible in order to maintain the detail in the images. Because I shoot almost all my daytime construction images handheld I find anti-ghosting to be one of the most important settings to monitor during processing of an HDR image. I am fairly sure that the use of anti-ghosting compensates for minor camera movement and aids in aligning the three frames I usually shoot in my bracket set.
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Whenever the cranes on tracks are set up they are almost always sitting on these heavy timber crane mats. The timbers are about 12″ x 12″ in cross section and then they are bolted together into slabs of several timbers. These slabs are leveled and placed on the ground to spread the weight of the construction crane evenly and make a stable platform for the crane to work from.
I came across this stack of crane mats and was drawn to the colors and textures of their surfaces. These crane mats were stored in a shaded area of the job site and the light was very low. By using a bracketed series of three exposures I was able to capture a wide dynamic range and bring out the texture, colors and detail in the image. This is another example of why I love using HDR techniques to photograph on the job site. The broad dynamic range provided by the bracket set allows me to make decisions about how I want to portray the subject in the final image and what elements are most important to me in the final photo.
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I shot this image because I liked the pattern and contrast that the earth compactor teeth left in the earth with the organic fissures between the machine made impressions.
View from the North Tower of the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project
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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.
