Tag: Ironworkers

Final Assembly of the Pier Reinforcement Structure

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Ironworkers on barge
Ironworkers on their construction barge put the final touches on the pier reinforcement structure.

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This image shows the pier reinforcement structure that will be taken out to the drilling platform in the background and installed inside a steel caisson  that has been drilled thirty feet into the bedrock under the river. The men are making their final assembly before rigging it to be lifted and inserted into the caisson the next day.

Once again I worked with a single frame from my bracket set in Aperture 3. I created a preset that I can apply to most of my shots from this day which will greatly speed up my processing for the entire shoot. Once I have my basic settings adjusted to suit my vision for the photo I create a preset that I can then apply to other images from the shoot and then adjust to fine tune a particular image.

Ironworkers

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Ironworkers Assembling an Iron Framework for a Bridge Pier.
Ironworkers Assembling an Iron Framework for a Bridge Pier.

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This shot is looking east with the Big Four Bridge in the background. The iron structure the ironworkers are building will be placed inside one of the steel cylinders that are in the righthand side of the image. There is a completed one on the barge behind the one where they are working. The hexagonal piece on the end is a jig to align the steel rebar while they assemble it.

This image is a single frame that was edited in Aperture 3 and Topaz Adjust. I wanted to capture the early morning fog and the light as the sun was coming up. The early morning on the river is a peaceful quiet time before the sun gets up in the sky and the temperature starts rising.

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Here’s a link to their site:

http://www.topazlabs.com/705.html

 

 

 

Ironworkers

Posted on by Nick Roberts
Dean Tharp, President of Ironworkers Local 70 at groundbreaking ceremony for the Louisville, KY downtown bridge project.
Dean Tharp, President of Ironworkers Local 70 at Groundbreaking Ceremony for Louisville Downtown Bridge.

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This series of images of Ironworkers is from the official Groundbreaking for the Downtown Span of the Louisville Bridges Project. After over twenty years of planning, revisions and indecision the new bridge to carry traffic over the Ohio River is finally underway. With a completion date of 2016 this is going to be a very intense and fast paced construction project. Not only will there be two new Ohio River Bridges built, one on the east end of Louisville connecting I-265 in Kentucky to I-265 in Indiana, there will be over 29 additional spans in the area known as “Spaghetti Junction” to connect the converging interstate highways of I-71, I-64 and I-65 to the new Ohio River Span.

I have decided to create a project that will focus not only on the bridge construction itself but more importantly on the skilled trades and laborers who will do the actual work of building the bridge and the many other structures that will be needed to see the project to completion. My goal with this endeavor will be to memorialize the contribution of the men and women whose hands are on the tools and give them a place in the history of this project. I hope to give faces and names to those who are making history and to leave behind a testament to them that their families and friends can go to to see them as they were building these bridges.

The first image today is of Dean Tharp the President of Ironworkers Local 70 as he and several other members attended the official groundbreaking ceremony. It is from a three frame bracket set of -2, 0 and +2 EV merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and finished in Aperture 3. I especially like the way the safety vests and t-shirts create a strong visual component in the composition as well as the detail of Dean’s tools which are the hallmark of Ironworkers everywhere. I also find the guy in the safety green shirt interesting because he is looking into the camera and is the only construction worker in safety green in the image. I think his posture and presence gives an added element to the overall composition.

Ironworker Local 70 members at official Groundbreaking for Downtown Bridge Louisville KY.
Ironworkers #1

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This second image is a single frame of the three frame bracket set I was shooting that day.  I chose to process it as a single frame because there was too much movement by the people in the scene for the anti-ghosting feature of NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to resolve. I used the underexposed frame of +2 EV because it gave the best rendering of the clouds and because there was plenty of light in the shadows to be able to show the detail there too. I used Aperture 3 exclusively to process the image adjusting the individual color channels to achieve the level of saturation and luminance I wanted in the final image.

Dean Tharp President of Ironworkers Local 70 at Downtown Bridge Groundbreaking Ceremony
Confidence 

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This image of Dean Tharp is another single frame processed in Aperture 3 using the same techniques as the previous image.