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Washington Metro is building a new line to Dulles Airport currently named the Silver Line. Along with the construction of additional lanes for the Washington beltway, this construction is causing many delays and other headaches to those of us who live in the area. However, it does provide for some unique images.
This is one of the gantries used to construct the concrete base for the elevated track. These are specialist cranes which basically move along the structure laying the concrete sections ahead of themselves before they move on.
I made this image late one afternoon as the sun was setting using the warm light to highlight the vivid yellow and blue of the steel girders. It is a 7 shot HDR which helped bring out the detail in both the crane and the elevated concrete track bed it had previously laid. After tonemapping the image in HDR Efex Pro, I adding some extra contrast using the Tone Contrast in Nik Color Efex Pro. The sky then had the noise removed using Nik Dfine 2.0 suitable masked so as not to effect areas where I wished to retain the gritty feeling.
I finished the image by giving it a 16:9 ratio crop to remove some of the excess sky which I felt did nothing to help the image.
Twitter: ljsaltiel
| November 9, 2011
Such vibrant colors and excellent framing.
Twitter: twitter (username)
| November 9, 2011
That sunset has really thrown some fine looking light on your subject. Great use of HDR.
Twitter: jameshowephoto
| November 9, 2011
I really like the strong colors in this shot. Great composition and terrific processing. Nice!
Twitter: catchthejiffy
| November 10, 2011
Man, look at all that steel!! (or at least I think it is steel…) I have seen these close up and they are pretty menacing! Well done with the capture!!
Twitter: jimnixaustin
| November 10, 2011
wow that is a cool find, love that framing too! great colors as well!
Twitter: JimiJones
| November 10, 2011
Love the vibrancy of this, Mark. So nicely composed and processed.
I’ve been coming to the DC area for a lifetime and can recall not a single time that something was not under construction. 🙂 This was a nice find, man.
Twitter: curtfleenor
| November 10, 2011
Powerful colors and composition Mark!
Twitter: chrisdmrf
| November 13, 2011
Wow the sun and HDR has really made the colours in this POP
Twitter: twitter (username)
| June 21, 2017
Love your blog! Hope for more posts!