2009 - Images Of The Year
When you look at the winners of ENR's Annual Photo Contest, you will notice that some are memorable images that come from amateur photographers. Selected by a panel of judges from 1,752 entries, those excellent amateur photos prove digital cameras have democratized high-quality photography to a degree never imagined by George Eastman, and the construction industry is a key beneficiary.
Brad Brenner
Photographer: Brad Brenner, Volkert Construction, Services Inc., Mobile, Ala.
Submitter: John Horn, Volkert Construction
Description: Volkert is responsible for construction engineering inspection services for the reconstruction of the Interstate-10 Twin Span bridges over Lake Pontchartrain in Slidell, La., for the Louisiana Dept. of Transportation and Development.
Joseph A. Blum
Photographer: Joseph A. Blum, People & Work Photography, San Francisco
Description: “That’s Ed Meyer’s crew,” says Blum of this shot of union ironworkers bolting up a 1,000-ton truss on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Blum has been shooting the project for 10 years. “I love documenting construction of this bridge—how the work progresses, how it gets done. They’ve been very good to me, allowing me to get close to the work.” He notes that these workers are about 150 ft above the bay, and conditions can be harsh. “Wind is the number-one problem; really heavy rain is another. Everything gets much more difficult. It is quite incredible, and there is just a gazillion bolts in that thing.”
Chris Haugen
Photographer: Chris Haugen, Marble Street Studio, Albuquerque, N.M.
Description: At dawn, outside of Yuma, Ariz., in December 2008, employees of Kiewit’s Denver district gather for flex-and stretch exercises before beginning work on the U.S. border fence. John Yost, the studio’s owner, switched on truck lights, and the rest of the shot fell into place, says photographer Chris Haugen.
Greg Phipps
Photographer: Greg Phipps, Communications Consultant, Washington State Dept. of Transportation, Seattle
Description: Phipps was inspired by the backdrop of Safeco Field, the Seattle Mariners’ baseball stadium, as it frames the crew pouring concrete for the foundation of the new Royal Brougham bridge. It is part of an $84-million improvement project.
Dwayne Easterling
Photographer: Dwayne Easterling, Chief Tunnel Inspector, Jacobs Associates, San Francisco
Description: Easterling, who formerly owned a photography business, took this shot in May of an excavator “flying” out of a 120-ft-dia. shaft on the South Cobb Tunnel Project in Austell, Ga. The machine was used to muck out the bottom, seen here about 120 ft below the surface. The shaft was later dropped to its ultimate depth of 200 ft through drill-and-shoot methods. Parsons/Jacobs Associates is the construction manager on the $306-million project.
Shawn
Photographer: Shawn O’Connell, Fort Worth, Texas
Submitter: Danielle Aguillard, C.F. Jordan Construction LLC, Dallas
Description: O’Connell liked the angle of this dozer against an overcast sky at the University of Texas, San Antonio’s Avalon Place apartment complex. O’Connell also is a third-grade teacher in Arlington, Texas.
Jason Brod
Photographer: Jason Brod, Shaw Energy & Chemicals Group, Houston
Description: A worker at a Shaw ethylene project in Saudi Arabia, now nearing completion, adjusts safety equipment and site materials to maintain a safe workplace, despite the harsh desert environment’s heat and frequent sand storms. The storms often leave a golden haze, as seen in this photo, which Brod, the group’s graphic designer and part-time photographer, shot in late 2009 to document the project’s progress.
Garry Whitaker
Photographer: Garry Whitaker, Swindon, U.K.
Description: Whitaker, a communications specialist for London-based Halcrow, took this photo from a bridge pylon more than 200 m above the bay of the Busan-Geoje Fixed Link, an 8.2 km bridge-tunnel in South Korea. Halcrow is technical consultant to main contractor Daewoo on the $1.8-billion project. “It’s very difficult to take a bad picture of this sort of structure,” he says.
R. Scott Lewis
Photographer: R. Scott Lewis, Corporate Photographer, ACCO Engineered Systems, Glendale, Calif.
Description: Controlling the blades for a 1.5-MW wind turbine during installation is tricky if the wind picks up. To get this shot of the lead man of a crew on the guide line, says Lewis, “I’ve got my hands on the ground, and I’m shooting from a very low angle.” Tightening the aperture yielded sharp focus to maximize the depth of field.
Tina Serafin
Photographer: Tina Serafin, Project Manager, Danny’s Construction Co. Inc., Shakopee, Minn.
Submitter: Dave Grimsrud, Danny’s Construction Co.
Description: “By the time the piece is hooked up, it is up to the guys. I get to stand back and watch,” says Serafin, who climbed atop the scoreboard for this shot of Danny’s ironworkers waiting for a built-up truss at the Minnesota Twins Ballpark in Minneapolis. The company’s highest crew size was 45 men and women, she says. “That’s how I started out,” she adds. “I was a permit worker with Ironworkers Local 512 while in college.”
Karen Martin
Photographer: Karen Martin, Island Wide Photo, Inwood, N.Y.
Submitter: Sara Picone, John P. Picone Inc., Lawrence, N.Y.
Description: Martin managed to get in position to capture the moment a tunnel-boring machine holed through complex rock underlying New York City’s Bronx borough at the junction of three 14.5-ft-dia. tunnel sections. Raw water from the city’s Croton water system will flow through the tunnels to a new filtration plant.
David Cornwell
Photographer: David Cornwell, Arvada, Colo.
Submitter: Colleen Kilkenny, The Weitz Co., Denver
Description: Early morning light helped enhance the silhouette effect as The Weitz Co. poured concrete floors at the Central Park Tower office building in Broomfield, Colo. Cornwell used a 500-mm zoom and “drew on the full power of the lens” to get the effect. He shot 15 frames to capture the moment.
Peder Thompson
Photographer: Peder Thompson, South St. Paul, Minn.
Description: Thompson became intrigued with the Wakota Bridge project in South St. Paul as he passed it on his morning walks, so he began documenting its progress. “I think bridges are one of the most interesting things we build as humans,” he says. With the permission of general contractor Lunda Construction, Black River Falls, Wis., he positioned himself on the apron of the crane as project foreman Jason Sterry waited to rig the bevel form for pier three.
Dan Payton
Photographer: Dan Payton, San Antonio, Texas
Submitter: Zachry Holdings Inc.
Description: In addition to shooting weddings, Dan Payton photographs construction for Zachry. Last May, the company asked him to shoot an employee working on the solar panels at its San Antonio headquarters. Payton says he found an extension ladder and used available light, producing this image of a worker seemingly afloat.
Eduardo Barcellos Corra
Photographer: Eduardo Barcellos Corra, São Paulo, Brazil
Submitter: Karolina Gutiez, Construtora Norberto Odebrecht, S.A., Macaé, Brazil
Description: Maintaining four oil and natural gas platforms in Brazil’s offshore Campos Basin for Petrobras, the country’s semi-public energy company, requires Odebrecht workers to clamber over towering structures far out at sea in 12-hour shifts often under harsh weather conditions. Daily, the platforms produce more than 30,000 barrels of oil and 35,000 cu meters of gas. Petrobras, Latin America’s largest company by revenue, discovered a new light-oil reserve in November, from which it expects to start production by next August.
Paul Floro
Photographer: Paul Floro, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Hurricane Protection Office
Submitter: Amanda Jones, HPO
Description: Water shoots from the weep holes of a 144-ft-long, 66-in.-dia. spun-cast cylinder pile being driven for New Orleans’ Inner Harbor Navigation Canal Surge Barrier. Floro says the earthy smell of the mud disturbed by the piles, the bang and roar of the steam hammer, the salty air and the rapid progress of the work brought a smile to his face every time he was on-site.
Peter Dering
Photographer: Peter Dering, Senior Project Engineer, McCarthy Building Cos. Inc., San Francisco
Submitter: Susan Garritano, McCarthy, St. Louis
Description: Dering was intrigued by the parallel lines of the crushed-aggregate stream and the steel erection crane in shooting this photo at the College of San Mateo, San Mateo, Calif., where McCarthy is managing a $160-million expansion. “It gives the photo composition, which grabs the eye,” he says. Dering says the photo also is a depiction of sustainability, as the contractor is using the aggregate from one demolished building for a paving base around the entire 153-acre campus.
David Selwyn
Photographer: David Selwyn, Marketing Manager, Keller Ltd., Cheltenham, U.K.
Description: Depicted is the lift of a restricted-access piling rig, owned by Systems Geotechnique, over and out of London’s historic Hotel Corinthia near Trafalgar Square during a major renovation, set to finish in late 2010. The geotechnical services firm, which has merged with Keller to form Keller Geotechnique, installed more than 420 piles in the hotel courtyard. The “London Eye,” the city’s record-setting Ferris-wheel attraction, appears in the background.
Patrick J. Cashin
Photographer: Patrick J. Cashin, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York, N.Y.
Description: Cashin, a 10-year veteran of underground MTA photography, took advantage of light from one sandhog’s hardhat lighting another man’s face to shoot this photo while documenting a subway-expansion tunnel bore. Shooting at 1600 ISO, f3.5 @1/30 second and he says that using the same available light the workers have “makes the photographs more real to me.”
Kort Duce
Photographer: Kort Duce, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Submitter: Kelly Rhodes, CH2M-WG Idaho
Description: Imagine taking 10,000 images of an integrated waste treatment plant in five months and then editing them down to a mere 1,000. That is what Duce did for the Dept. of Energy’s $500-million Idaho cleanup project, after becoming certified as a radiological worker so he could get on the site. The serenity at dusk captured by the 12-year veteran photographer is in stark contrast to his action motorsports photography, which Duce calls his “specialty and love.” His client, CH2M-WG Idaho, used his photos of project workers for a 2010 calendar.
Epifanio Talania Jr.
Photographer: Epifanio Talania Jr., Plant Hoist Engineer, Arabtec Construction LLC, Dubai
Submitter: Hassan Dajani, Arabtec Construction LLC
Description: Dizzying height? Unsteady hand? Not for Talania, who was perched some 678 m above sea level on the open stair of the spire of the world’s tallest building when he “snapped” workers dismantling the hoist mast. The lofty breeze on the Burj Dubai that day last March was a gentle 10 to 15 kph.
Michael Gilbert
Photographer: Michael Gilbert, Inspector, Louisiana TIMED Management, Baton Rouge, La.
Description: When Gilbert grabbed his trusty point-and-shoot digital camera to document progress on the widening of the Huey P. Long Bridge in Louisiana, he didn’t expect to create a work of art, but he got one when he shot workers putting the final touches on the painting of new bolts that replaced the old rivets. Because the containment had been removed, workers were required to use brushes and rollers for the final touch-up.
Jon McAlpin
Photographer: Jon McAlpin, Field Engineer, Robins & Morton, Birmingham, Ala.
Description: McAlpin, an engineer and quality control manager on the firm's $170-million replacement of the Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center in Daytona Beach, had an intuition he'd have a good shot when he spotted a worker for the job's glazing subcontractor, Harmon Inc., installing glazing on the curtain wall facade eight stories up just as afternoon storm clouds were gathering.
Stephen Setteducati
Photographer: Stephen Setteducati, Worcester, Mass.
Description: Setteducati says he shot the photo from a low angle to make the “animal-like” loader look even more like a prehistoric beast with a kill. In this case the “kill” is a load of copper harvested during demolition of a Massachusetts Mutual building in Hartford, Conn.
Dennis Lee
Photographer: Dennis Lee, South Salem, N.Y.
Description: Workers and steel float in a 3-D ballet as a beam is eased out during work on the “Walkway Over the Hudson,” an iconic 19th-Century rail bridge in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., that was transformed into the longest pedestrian bridge in the world by Harrison and Burrowes Bridge Constructors, Glenmont, N.Y., and A-E firm Bergmann Associates, Rochester, N.Y.
Steven Witz
Photographer: François Robert, Tucson, Ariz.
Submitter: Steven Witz, Continental Electrical Construction Co., Skokie, Ill.
Description: John Denton, an 18-year general foreman with this family-owned electrical contractor, presents an air of confidence as the subject of the firm's recent safety brochure. Denton is working on a 550,000-sq-ft data center in Northlake, Ill., which company President David Witz says will be the world's largest.
Dan White
Photographer: Dan White, Project Engineer, Conestoga-Rovers & Associates Inc., Kalamazoo, Mich.
Description: White had a narrow window and some tough terrain to cross to capture this shot of rock blasting by his firm’s subcontractor, Superior Blasting Inc., at a phosphate-mine reclamation site in remote Georgetown Canyon, Idaho. But he knew the blast of 8,000 cu yd of rock, necessary to generate more cost-effective riprap to cover site waste and structures, might produce an interesting photo.
Julie Radziwon
Photographer: Julie Radziwon, MEP Project Engineer, McCarthy Building Cos. Inc.
Description: The unique configuration of the central core of the pneumatic tube system being installed in St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., inspired project engineer Radziwon to snap this picture. The tubes will deliver items to 25 stations.
Alissa Hollimon
Photographer: Alissa Hollimon, Dallas
Submitter: Jen Jonas, Zachry Holdings Inc., San Antonio, Texas
Description: Manuel Anselmo-Arroyo tightens a nut on a powerplant job at Cane Island, Fla. “These people work really hard, day in and out,” says Hollimon, who flew in for a site visit to capture this shot. “I am blessed to get to do it,” she says of her work.
Alissa Hollimon
Photographer: Alissa Hollimon, Dallas
Submitter: Jen Jonas, Zachry Holdings Inc., San Antonio, Texas
Description: Unloading rebar as work starts on the Sandy Creek Power Generation Facility in Waco, Texas.