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This is a detail shot of the top of the bridge pier on the Kentucky end of the Big Four Bridge. I shot this just after sunrise. The shadows are very interesting in that they are creating an optical illusion that the numbers are raised when in reality they are embossed into the concrete.
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This is another shot from above the Big Four Bridge. In the background is the Kennedy Bridge that carries Interstate 65 across the Ohio River.
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Yesterday morning I was given the opportunity to ride in the man lift to the top of the Big Four Bridge. Even though I am very scared of heights I jumped at the chance. It wasn’t nearly as frightening as I thought it would be. The guys on the job gave me a safety harness to wear that would keep me from falling off the bridge and away we went. Tim, the guy operating the lift, was very comfortable and his calmness made the trip easy. At first I was content to just be even with the top of the bridge but after a few shots there I asked Tim to lift me higher so I could shoot down on the bridge. We spent 10 minutes or so while I looked for my compositions and shot a few quick studies of the scene from there.
I’m heading back there this morning and I may even get the courage to walk out on the bridge itself. As I write this I wonder if I’ll be able to step out of the basket on the lift or if I’ll have to content myself with shooting from the safety of the lift.
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I went down to the riverfront yesterday morning to shoot the arrival of Hurricane Isaac in Louisville. Usually after a Gulf Coast hurricane moves inland it comes up the Mississippi River and then drifts east through the Ohio River Valley. I expected the sky to be rather dramatic and I was really hoping to capture the sunrise. I shot several images from Waterfront Park looking east and liked what I was getting. I applied my adage of “looking behind myself” to see if there was anything going on in the western sky when I saw the blue moon, a second full moon in one month, just above the Kennedy Bridge. The clouds were moving in from the southwest and I really liked the way they were drifting past the moon. I immediately shot a bracketed set of images from EV +2 through -2 in one stop amounts to capture as much detail as I could even though it was still at least 30 minutes before actual sunrise.
Back in the studio I opened the bracket set in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and merged them with the Ghosting Adjustment set to 20% which allowed the sky to stay as I envisioned it when I captured the scene. I started with the Deep 2 preset and adjusted the tone map and tonality until I had what I wanted. By boosting the Highlight and White sliders I got the moon to pop out of the clouds which was how I had originally envisioned the scene. I then took the image back into Aperture 3 where I cleaned up some sensor spots, subtly boosted the Vibrance slider and applied sharpening. I also cropped the final image into a panoramic framing to accent the linearity of the bridge before exporting it for the web.
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I took this photo this morning from the Big Four Bridge looking southwest into Louisville. After cropping and adjusting the image in Aperture 3 I took it into NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 where I applied one of the Realistic presets, Deep 2. I adjusted the tonality as well as the black and white points before applying the Graduated Neutral Density filters. I dropped the sky approximately 1 stop and opened up the lower part of the image approximately 1/3 stop before adding the vignette to the final image.
