High above the Ohio River you can see the scope of the work on the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville, KY.
Tag: louisville kentucky
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.
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
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Carpenters of the Ohio River Bridges Project
This post showcases several different images of the Carpenter’s trade.
Ohio River Bridges Project Progressing Well
The work on the Ohio River Bridges Project is proceeding well as can be seen in the accompanying photos from Indiana and Kentucky. The girders from Indiana are heading south and soon will be connected to the first section of the Downtown Span at Pier 5 where the first section of bridge road deck has begun to take shape.
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The weather on this particular morning was changing from clear skies to rain clouds and made for a dramatic backdrop to my photos of Brian Kirker. Brian is an Operating Engineer who came here from Las Vegas to work on this project. I wanted to capture the towers on Pier 5 as well as his excavator when he happened to move into a perfect place for that shot.
As a rule I don’t pose people when I’m shooting because I feel it will interfere with the work they are doing but in this case I did motion for Brian to hold still while I shot a couple of bracket sets. I knew that due to the strong backlight and broad dynamic range the best approach would be to shoot this scene for HDR processing.
Back in my studio I took the three frame bracket set of -2, 0 and +2 EV exposures into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and merged them. I then applied a custom preset of my own creation (one I had used several months ago) to get the look I felt best accented the image. After I had done that I took the resulting image into Adobe Camera Raw for some adjustments to the Brightness, Exposure, Fill Light and Blacks. I also added a little Vibrance to the image and then opened it in Photoshop CS5.
Once I had the image in Photoshop CS5 I added a new layer and made a Curves adjustment in order to get pure white and pure black. I then flattened the layers before adjusting the Sharpening using the Smart Sharpen command. Recently I have been using ACR and PS CS5 more in my processing workflow. I have discovered that doing so has allowed me to attain better results than I used to get from finishing the HDR process in Aperture 3. There is more vibrance in the colors and the whites are more pronounced.
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In this second image Brian is lifting a drainage pipe as David Preston, an Inspector with FIGG, verifies that it is being installed per the job specifications. Throughout the construction process outside entities like FIGG monitor the work being done to make certain that everything is properly installed.
I liked the way the composition worked and also the way the light played along the excavator bucket. Having David and the large concrete cylinder in the foreground with Brian and the excavator in the middle ground and the beautiful clouds in the background really makes this image work for me. I used the same post processing steps in this image as in the preceding image.
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The last two images in this post are from the barges alongside Pier 5 and give an idea of the scale of the work that is going on on the river. Near the center of the image workers can be seen near the tower base. The first section of bridge is in place and the deck panels are being installed. I liked the way the sky was reflected in the water puddles on the barges and the wetness of everything in contrast to the clearing sky.
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As with all the other images in this post I used HDR processing to bring out the details in both the highlights and the shadows while enhancing the colors in the scene. When shooting these infrastructure construction photos I find HDR techniques to be indispensable tools. I always shoot bracket sets with 2 stop intervals and most times I am able to use all of them in the final image. In the event that the subjects in the bracketed photos have moved too much for the software to accommodate I usually find I have one image that has a good enough exposure that it can be processed for an acceptable final image.
Was a Rainbow Over the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project a Positive Omen?
I try to capture something from the Ohio River Bridges Project nearly every workday. The rapid progress that is being made now is transforming the landscape all along the construction site. It isn’t always possible to be in just the right place every day but I really hope to provide a pretty complete view of how the Ohio River Bridges Project is progressing. I like to think that this rainbow is a positive omen for the project and for my own desire to show the world of heavy highway and bridge construction to the world though my images.
The other morning there were scattered showers moving in from the northwest and I was lucky enough to be in just the right place when the morning sunrise illuminated a gorgeous rainbow over the construction at Towers 4 and 5. I was on the Kentucky shore where the bridge will land in Louisville. I adjusted my vantage point in an effort to align the base of the rainbow with the eastern tower on pier 5. In doing so I was also able to include it’s intersection with the eastern tower at pier 4. In the upper right hand corner of the image is another faint rainbow that I discovered during processing.
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The images in this post were captured all around the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville Kentucky in the past 30 days. There are photos of individual tradesmen, progress on the Downtown Span and the reconfiguring of Spaghetti Junction. All this activity keeps me hopping as I try to capture the process as well as the progress of this massive Heavy Highway and Bridge Construction project.
In several of these photos I have taken the liberty of sharing different versions of the same scenes. I like to use HDR techniques and HDR software when capturing and processing my images. I often like to take those same HDR images into various Black and White processing apps. I am not married to any one B&W app and use many different plug-ins as well as the B&W conversion tools in Photoshop CS5 and Aperture 3. I like the variety of effects I can get by using Topaz B&W, onOne B&W Effects and NIK Silver Efex Pro 2.
