Today I’d like to thank all of the folks who made 2014 another great year for Speeddemon2 Photography; I’m also going to share some of my favorite images from 2014.
Category: Fine Art Photo
2014 Commemorative Print Now Available
Today I am releasing a 2014 Commemorative Print of the Downtown Crossing to mark the progress that was made in 2014. I was lucky enough one morning last month to be at the right place at the right time to capture two rainbows over the tower for the downtown span. I think it is a fitting image for the past year’s progress and I hope my viewers agree.
I am accepting orders for prints in three sizes on .040″ aluminum ready for hanging. The sizes are 11″ X 14″ @ $109.00, 16″ X 20″ @ $239.00 and 32″ X 40″ @ $899.00. Interested parties can reach me through the Contact Form below for further information or to place an order.
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Antonio Villanueva Placing Concrete
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This photo of Antonia Villanueva was captured while he was placing concrete this fall in Section 1 of the Ohio River Bridges Project. Antonio is a Carpenter with Walsh Construction and one of his roles is to man the hose from the concrete pump when placing concrete.Placing the concrete with the hose is a very physical job that looks easy to someone who hasn’t tried it. In reality the weight of the material flowing through the hose requires a lot of strength to maneuver it. I processed the image in Adobe Camera Raw from a single frame. I then took it into Photoshop CS5 when I created the border and descriptive title.
I use a local printer, Unique Imaging Concepts. to have these types of images printed on .040″ Aluminum. The process makes a dye-sublimation print that will last for over 100 years. This makes a very nice way for anyone working on the Ohio River Bridges Project to have a permanent memento of their role in the construction of the Ohio River Bridges Project. I usually try to size the finished print to approximately 11′ X 14″ though that can vary depending upon the way the image is cropped. They come mounted with a hanging system that floats the panel 1/2″ off the wall and sell for $100 each. Any image that I have posted here on the blog can be presented in this fashion.
I have included some examples of these prints that I have made for other people working on the Ohio River Bridges Project in this post too. I strive to create images of these men and women that are more than a simple portrait.My focus with these is to create something that shows the person in the photo in the environment that they work in. The goal is to produce something that will allow them to share with their friends and family a vision of the work they did while building the Ohio River Bridges Project.
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.
Sunrise over Louisville’s Towhead Island
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Towhead Island is located in the Ohio River just east of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was formed by a barge that sank many years ago and obstructed the channel. Over many decades the river delivered loads of silt and debris which eventually created the island we see today. Not only is it a staging area for barges to be transported down river it is also a mini wildlife refuge hosting a few blue herons and the occasional beaver.
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Towhead Island also creates a calm protected waterway to the University of Louisville’s boathouse, a police substation and a large marina. The lights on the distant shore are from the Jeff Boat boat building yards in Jeffersonville Indiana. On this particular morning the University of Louisville rowing teams were training and moving along the western end of the island.
