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Traveling the Road to Discovery
Tag: transportation
Taking a break, enjoying the road.
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Climbing Up Inside The Tower Crane on Pier Four of The Ohio River Bridges Project
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Last week I was cleared by the safety manager to enter and climb the tower crane that has been installed on pier four of the Ohio River Bridges Project. The tower crane is approximately 100 feet tall now and will eventually be extended up to around 200 feet in order to build the bridge towers for the northern tower of the downtown span. Each section of the crane tower is ten feet tall and affords me a place to stand and shoot from as I climb up. I only went up six sections but with the additional height of the tower base I was able to shoot from around eighty feet above the river. The view of the project from there is amazing and I can’t wait to climb higher the next time I’m out there. Eventually I will be able to climb all the way up to the crane itself and see the project as the crane operator sees it.
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In this second image you can see the base of the eastern leg of the northern bridge tower and the shadow of the tower crane. I think I was around forty feet above the base but I’m not sure exactly which level I was on when I shot this image. The river was pretty muddy from the heavy rains that went through upstream from Louisville a few days earlier. The brown shapes on the water are driftwood branches and logs that are swept into the river whenever the river rises.
Not much more to say about these images except that they are both HDR shot handheld in a three frame bracket set of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures. They were merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and finished in Aperture 3.
Work On Southbound I-65 Bridges and Roadway Progresses
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The southbound I-65 work is progressing well as the Walsh Construction crews build the new bridges and roadway that will replace the old I-65 infrastructure. In this photo you can see the steel bridge decking being installed in the center of the image while an Ironworker welds the supporting angle iron in place. I chose this image because I like the way the figures are arranged from the foreground through the frame. I also like the way the welding arc is sparking and the way the welder is positioned in the image.
As in most of my work this too is a HDR image created from a three frame bracket set of +2, 0 and -2 EV exposures. I had to use an anti-ghosting setting of 100% in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 to address the many different poses the figures were in between frames. The ability to shoot handheld images of people movin
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This second image also shows the Ironworkers welding and placing the steel bridge decking. The decking will support the concrete during the pouring of the roadway after the Ironworkers place reinforcing rebar across the completed bridge deck prior to pouring of the concrete. Once again you can see the power of the NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 anti-ghosting feature, especially in the way it has rendered the woman’s leg as she kicks the steel decking into place. As in the previous image I had to use a setting of 100% anti-ghosting in order to freeze the action and avoid ghosting artifacts.
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I really liked the way the pre-stressed concrete bridge beams cast their shadows on the ground below them and the strong movement their placement gave to this image. This is also near Slugger Field where the new roadway is taking shape overhead. Once these bridges and roadways are completed traffic will be moved over onto this new roadway and demolition will begin on the old southbound I-65 infrastructure which will be replaced with new bridges and roadway. Once again I followed my normal HDR workflow of NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and Aperture 3 processing.
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This final image in today’s post is once again from beneath the concrete bridge beams for the new southbound I-65. I shot this using my 12-24 mm Nikkor lens and decided to take it into Photoshop CS5 after merging the bracket set in order to correct the lens distortion inherent in such a wide angle shot. This too is a HDR image created from a three handheld frame bracket set merged in NIK HDR Efex Pro 2 and finished in Aperture 3.
View from the North Tower of the Downtown Span of the Ohio River Bridges Project
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Howdy everyone. It’s been weeks since I last posted about my ongoing project to chronicle the progress of the Ohio River Bridges Project here in Louisville. I’ve been quite busy with several other aspects of my personal project of photographing the bridge building process and the men and women who are building it. When I began this project I had no idea how truly monumental and time consuming it would be.
The last bridge/construction project I worked on was much smaller and didn’t fully prepare me for the scope of a major civil engineering project such as the Ohio River Bridges Project. When I photographed the Big Four Pedestrian Bridge and the men who did it I was working with a crew that numbered less than thirty people. In contrast the Ohio River Bridges Project involves not only the main span across the Ohio River but also a complete realignment and reconstruction of the area known as Spaghetti Junction. A project of this magnitude requires hundreds of people to accomplish and really expands my personal involvement. In Spaghetti Junction there are over fifty bridges and overpasses that will be needed to connect the new bridge to the Interstates that converge in Louisville. While the downtown span will carry northbound I-65 it must also join I-64 and I-71in Spaghetti Junction.
I have had to learn how to pace myself and how to best record the progress being made. In addition to the photography challenges I face there is the need to catalog, process and organize the thousands of photographs that I have already taken. Over this past winter I discovered that I needed to greatly expand my storage equipment to accommodate the massive amount of images I am recording. I had to upgrade several hard drives and take control of the photos or face utter chaos as the project grew. I thrive on challenges and this project has been the largest challenge I have faced as a professional photographer.
I lost the first two months of 2014 to personal health issues that prevented me from getting out to the job site as much as I wanted. I also had to contend with the extreme weather that gripped Louisville and slowed the construction. That is all past me now and I’m back to shooting regularly. I have upgraded my storage media and improved my workflow to allow me to capture the images I need to tell the story.
This week I was able to get out on the river and survey the progress that has been made getting the piers drilled and in place. The northern tower is progressing well and the tower crane is being assembled on it. The two towers that make up the northern tower are already taking shape and it was possible for me to climb up the western one and get the image that begins this post. In the weeks to come I will be climbing higher on these towers to shoot the Ironworkers and Carpenters as they build them.
