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: the Ohio River Bridges Project
Viewing the Ohio River Bridges Project from the Tower Crane on Pier Four
Several photographs from inside the mast of the tower crane on the Ohio River Bridges Project in Louisville, Kentucky being built by Walsh Construction
Construction Diver Prepares to Enter Water.
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A few weeks ago the shaft of drilling head on the BG 40 snapped off while drilling a 12 foot diameter hole inside the pier casing. There were numerous attempts made to secure the broken drill head to remove it from the casing each of which required a diver to go down and assess the situation. In this image the diver and his assistant are checking the diver’s helmet and air supply lines prior to his dive. Once he was properly geared up he entered a wire cage and was lowered into the casing so that he could perform his tasks to secure lifting rigging to extract the drill head from the casing. The lines on the ground are the diver’s air supply as well as his communication link to his assistant and the rest of the dive team. The air tank on the diver’s back is a safety backup in case something were to fail with the air supply lines while he is underwater and provide a supply of air to allow him to safely return to the surface.
This is a three exposure bracket set of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures that I then merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 with 60% anti-ghosting applied to minimize the ghosting caused by the movement of the two men as they geared up for the dive. I applied a preset that I built for this particular day’s shooting that intensified the colors and compensated for some of the overexposure that the bright morning sun caused. After completing the merger and applying the needed tone adjustments I returned the image to Aperture 3 where I applied adjustments to the separate color channels, contrast and sharpening. One of the primary reasons I like using multiple exposures and HDR techniques is the way I can open up shadow details yet retain the highlights in a scene. HDR allows me to render the image in a way that closely resembles the way the human eye sees but the camera sensor cannot record in a single exposure.
Rigging for the Caisson Pick
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These Ironworkers are setting the rigging to pick this caisson and right it so that it can be lowered into the casing for final placement. To lift it two cranes must coordinate their actions so that the main crane can upright the assembly and transfer it from the barge to the pier casing. Photo Tip: Having the men in the photo helps give scale to the size of the structure.
Once more this is a three bracket set of exposures using -2, 0 and +2 EV to capture the broad dynamic range between the sky and the foreground I encountered. This is one of the most important reasons to learn and use HDR techniques so that in a situation like this there is a reasonable chance that there will be enough data to create a good image after merging the exposures.
I used NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and Aperture 3 to merge and process the image.
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This second image is not an HDR image. There was too much movement of the cables and hooks, between frames in the bracket set; for the anti ghosting to handle in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2. I decided to take the normal (0 EV) exposure into Topaz Clarity to see how well it would do with the wide dynamic range. All in all I am fairly pleased with the way that I was able to bring out some shadow detail and still hold the sky detail using a single exposure. I know some folks like to take the normal exposure and change the exposure value in subsequent copies for a faux HDR look but I don’t go that route since there isn’t any additional data captured as there is when a bracket set is used.
Sunrise Over the Ohio River Bridges Project
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Today’s HDR image is from the Ohio River Bridges Project, Downtown Span, being built by Walsh Construction on the Ohio River in Louisville Kentucky; they are now working on the foundation for every pier across the river. This view is from the Indiana shore in Jeffersonville looking east. There are cranes on barges across the river; each one doing some piece of work essential to the foundation prep work. Looking south there are also cranes along the horizon where work is also progressing on the rebuilding of Louisville’s Spaghetti Junction which will tie the existing freeways into the new Ohio River Downtown Span.
I used my usual three bracket set of -2, 0 and +2 EV to capture the broad dynamic range in the scene. In my processing I first merged the three images in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I tone-mapped it before bringing the HDR image back into Aperture and into onOne Perfect Layers where I used some adjustment layers to intensify and enhance to colors in the scene. I also applied my sharpening in onOne Perfect Effects before saving the image for the web from Aperture 3.
