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This image is of David Morse, a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers, and the BG-40 Drilling Rig he is operating. The large drum with the teeth on it is a rock drill which is almost twelve feet in diameter. David is using it to drill thirty feet into the bedrock for the piers that will support the new Ohio River Bridge. David is quite a character and when he saw me photographing him he grabbed the book and acted as if he needed to read the manual to do his job. He could easily write the book himself given his vast experience operating drilling equipment.

I added a circular polarizer to my lens last week and it has really boosted the saturation in my exposures. I didn’t know what I was missing by not using the polarizer until I saw the RAW files I got from this shoot. I shot a three frame bracket set of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures which I then opened in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and merged using 100% anti-ghosting to get a good portrait of David. I applied a preset I built myself for another project which really worked well with the images from this day’s shoot too.

One of the great things about shooting almost daily is that I learn more and more about getting the images I see in my mind with each new shoot. There is nothing that improves an artist’s work more than practice. My motto is practice, practice, practice and I often tell other photographers that practice is the best thing they can do if they hope to improve their skills and their images.