2005: Images of the Year in Construction
Will anyone ever forget the images of the Chinook helicopters target-bombing sandbags into the breached New Orleans canals? Or the sight of $3 a gallon posted above the pump at the gas station?
Sue Bednarz
Photographer: Sue Bednarz
Submitter: Jacobs Associates Portland, Ore.
Geologist/photographer Bednarz is equally passionate about her vocation and avocation. After the hole-through, a worker connects rigging to remove the tunnel-boring machine on Portland's West Side CSO project. The photo captures the essential scale and nature of modern tunneling with stark simplicity.
Carol H. Feeley
Photographer: Carol H. Feeley
Submitter: HSC Builders and Construction Managers, Exton, Pa.
Steam envelopes workers during a cold, early morning pour during construction of a Structural Engineering Teaching & Research Laboratory for Villanova University's College of Engineering in Villanova, Pa.
Elizabeth OâBrien
Photographer and Submitter: Elizabeth O’Brien, EIO photo, Somerville, Mass.
An untethered ironworker “walks the line” on the frame of a condominium garage in Boston. While the activity looks like an “apparent” safety violation, steel connectors can work up to 30 ft high without fall protection.
Roy Meddings
Photographer: Roy Meddings
Submitter: Andersen Construction Co., Portland, Ore.
From this photo of ironworkers bolting steel mid-air, it's tough to tell that Meddings, who normally works in quality control and risk management, is passionate about landscape art. Meddings, photographer for a day at PSV East Tower in Portland, Ore., shot "Up in the Air, Down On His Knees," while sitting on the floor of an adjacent parking structure. When he saw the shot coming, he says he raced to a place "where the guys were just visible between the guard rail and the upper level," and with "no time to set up the tripod, no time to change lenses," took nine action shots. "I think some passersby thought I was nuts-sitting on the pavement in the middle of a garage," he says.
Sue Bednarz
Photographer and Submitter: Sue Bednarz, Jacobs Associates, San Francisco, Calif.
Company photographer Bednarz says she was struck by the drama and scale of a "pull-back" operation at the Port of Tacoma, Wash. Workers, poised to draw almost a half-mile long bundle of high density polyethylene pipe through a newly drilled tunnel under the Blair Waterway, used a crane to lift the bundle to let traffic pass. The work is part of a $3.5-million project to clear overhead obstructions and deepen the shipping channel to 60 ft for the next generation of container cargo vessels.
Nelson Bakerman
Photographer and Submitter: Nelson Bakerman, Brooklyn, N.Y.
"Nothing is more powerful than black-and-white," says Bakerman, who shoots only with film. That apparently suits his clients, such as developer Forest City Ratner, who gave him a multi-year contract to record its 34-story courthouse project in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Joseph Romeo
Photographer: Joseph Romeo
Submitter: Potomac Crossing Consultants, Alexandria, Va.
The other-worldliness of a big job site is captured by Romeo's morning shot of the $2.45- billion Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Washington, D.C. The relative peace of the new deck contrasts with the heavy traffic nearby.
Georgina Gast
Photographer: Georgina Gast
Submitter: CG Schmidt Inc., Milwaukee, Wis.
While interning at Schmidt last summer, Gast caught these glaziers in a balancing act during construction of GE Healthcare's New World Campus, in Wauwatosa, Wis. Schmidt is construction manager on the project to build the 500,000-sq-ft facility for three of GE Healthcare's technology divisions.
Mark Katzman
Photographer: Mark Katzman
Submitter: McCarthy Building Cos. Inc., St. Louis
The city of Phoenix hired McCarthy to design and build the Lake Pleasant Water Treatment Plant. The $336-million, 80-million-gallon-per-day plant, scheduled for completion in 2007, is the largest design-build-operate water project under construction in North America. Katzman got an early start as the crew placed a large concrete deck. "I wanted to get the sun coming up, showing the bucket, the crew, the movement on the site," he says. Shooting from about 11 ft , the cameraman's 17-mm lens was spattered with concrete.
Garrett Hoffman
Photographer: Garrett Hoffman
Submitter: FIGG Engineering Group, Tallahassee, Fla.
Workers set the last 94-ton concrete segment March 31 on the northbound side of the twin-span, $110-million Victory Bridge over New Jersey's Raritan River, connecting Perth Amboy and Sayreville. The bridge's 440-ft-long precast segmental main span, the longest in the U.S., was designed by FIGG Engineering Group. "This was the last piece of the puzzle," says Hoffman, project engineer. The spans replace a four-lane swing bridge built in 1927 to carry Route 35 across the river. Hoffman says it was opening 1,100 times a year and holding up traffic for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. The new bridge, he says, "is beautiful."
Greg Langevin
Photographer: Greg Langevin
Submitter: Cives Steel Co., Roswell, Ga.
Project coordinator Langevin, a former ironworker, stood on the tallest beam he could find to shoot ironworkers from Local 40, Manhattan, as they set a "diagrid" node for the perimeter-steel skeleton of the Hearst Building. Langevin's job is to "make sure the iron keeps going up in the air." He has taken 4,000 pictures at jobsites, "in case something goes wrong." On that day, he took about 36. Calling the ironworkers "top notch," he says the node was set perfectly.
Mike OâDwyer
Photographer: Mike O’Dwyer
Submitter: NorthPage Ltd., London, U.K.
O’Dwyer used a fisheye lens to capture the Coliseum-like interior of the 70-year-old Unilever House, London, headquarters for Unilever PLC. O’Dwyer’s client, Bovis Lend Lease, is construction manager on the project to rebuild within the historic facade.
John Dvorak
Photographer: John Dvorak
Submitter: FIGG Engineering Group, Tallahassee, Fla.
A barge carrying four of 84 precast segments for the 4,500-ft-long Four Bears Bridge in New Town, N.D., plows across icy Lake Sakakawea at the headwaters of the Missouri River. The $55-million bridge across the Missouri River is the third near this site.
Bob Sward
Photographer: Bob Sward
Submitter: Structural Group, Hanover, Md.
Sward, a manager for cable supplier Structural Group, was checking on the Ohio Dept. of Transportation¹s cable-stayed, U.S. Grant Bridge between Ohio and Kentucky at Portsmouth, Ohio, when he caught the $38-million bridge in flight. The designer is HNTB, Kansas City. Construction engineer is Buckland & Taylor Ltd., North Vancouver, B.C. The bridge's 64 stays range from 197 ft to 467 ft in length. Sward, a branch manager for cable supplier Structural Group, was making a job-site visit.
Steve Foster
Photographer: Steve Foster
Submitter: Cianbro/Reed LLC, Verona, Maine.
"I'm very proud to say we've worked for two years and three weeks without a lost-time injury," says job safety supervisor Foster of the $83-million replacement bridge for U.S. Route 1 between Prospect and Verona, Maine. Foster's photo shows workers preparing reinforcing steel and formwork for the second lift of the upper pylon on the Prospect side of the Penobscot River. "Our good safety record doesn't happen by accident-pardon the pun," he says. He has some 1,500 pictures from this job, some of which he uses in safety training as either examples of good or bad practices.
Rick Hunter
Photographer: Rick Hunter
Submitter: Zachry Construction Corp., San Antonio, Texas
Workers performing maintenance and small capital work lift a compressor shaft into place during work on a $12.4-million project at the ChevronPhillips Chemical Cedar Bayou Complex, in Texas. Looking for a potential cover shot for a Zachry publication, photographer Hunter climbed on top of the equipment being serviced to get a photo with a long vertical axis. "Shooting on their level is not interesting," he says. He was attracted by the teamwork evident in their action.
Paul E. Knapick
Photographer: Paul E. Knapick
Submitter: BBL Construction Services, Albany, N.Y.
Knapick was hoping for a clear dawn and beautiful light as he headed out to shoot a 1,500-yd concrete pour at the site of a $30-million jail facility in Essex County, N.Y. "When the fog came in I thought I was skunked," he says, but he kept shooting for a winner.
John Huseby
Photographer: John Huseby
Submitter: California Dept. of Transportation, Sacramento, Calif.
When Huseby started shooting construction for CalTrans, friends said it would get boring. Five years later, "I still have a great time," he says. This shot of the $1.06-billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Skyway tells much about the project, and bridges old and new.
Dan White
Photographer: Dan White, White & Associates, Kansas City, Mo.
Submitter: Hilti Inc., Tulsa, Okla. Hired to capture images of Hilti tools on the job, White found the people so interesting he began taking portraits. This crew was at work at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.
Gayle Leonard
Photographer: Gayle Leonard
Submitter: Black & Veatch, Kansas City, Mo.
A writer for Black & Veatch, Leonard says she struggles to find photos for her copy, so she decided to shoot her own as she began writing about an $11.3-million flood control structure in Lenexa, Kansas. She found herself in the middle of a highly technical jobsite, watching "this one guy with a shovel and a broom, old-school tools," cleaning up for a concrete pour. Strong lines make the shot.
Nelson Bakerman
Photographer and Submitter: Nelson Bakerman, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Bakerman has a four-year contract to spend a day each month on the New York Times headquarters building going up in Manhattan. He takes an assistant, he says, because his job takes him out on the steel and he needs someone to sling cameras up to him on a rope. He says he often scopes out the background potential of a shot and then waits for his moment.
Rick Hunter
Photographer: Rick Hunter
Submitter: Zachry Construction Corp., San Antonio, Texas
A welder seals a water tank cap, which is lying on the ground before being hoisted into place, on an $82-million expansion of Florida Power & Light Co.'s Manatee Powerplant Unit 3, in Parrish, Fla. Work was performed by Zachry Construction Corp. "For all the machinery and fancy equipment these companies have, it still takes a guy to do this," notes Hunter.
John V. Robinson
Photographer: John V. Robinson
Submitter: Pacific Northwest District Council of Ironworkers
As he drove toward the bridge to shoot for the Council of Ironworkers, Robinson saw the $840-million, 5,400-ft-long Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, Wash., rising beside its partner in the fog. He knew the fog would burn off fast, so he pulled over and started to shot. "My instincts were right," he says.
Dan White
Photographer: Dan White, White & Associates, Kansas City, Mo.
Submitter: Hilti Inc., Tulsa, Okla.
A huge expanse of frosted glass on an addition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City turned the job into a black-and-white photographers' dream studio, says White. "It just had great light... a big diffuser...and that tool had such an interesting silhouette." His client, with its famously red line of tools, also "really likes black and white," he adds.
Brian Fulcher
Photographer: Brian Fulcher
Submitter: J.F. Shea Construction Inc., Walnut, Calif.
Shea's Brian Fulcher is a master at capturing the sandhog's point of view. In 2003, we featured his shot of an Atlanta drilled shaft and last year a Los Angeles sewer upgrade made the cut. This year's winner is from Vienna, Austria: the Weintalsammler CSO tunnel, a PORR Tunnelbau-Bilfinger Berger joint venture. Fulcher saw it on a tour of European tunneling jobs, then returned and got the owner's permission to revisit the jobsite with his Canon A2E with a 17-35-mm zoom lens. Shooting without a tripod or flash, he recorded "the final finishing and plugging of bolt recesses and grout holes-to develop a hydraulically smooth finished surface."
Joseph A. Blum
Photographer: Joseph A. Blum
Submitter: People & Work Photography, San Francisco, Calif.
Blum says he loves shooting the $1-billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and Skyway project, which he has been doing since they first turned dirt in 1999. But as he was watching ironworkers on the last of 28 pier foundations recently he was amazed to see they were using techniques he had not seen, despite all his time on the job. "It's a very efficient operation," he says of the way they were shooting bar from the magazine into the cage. "I was so fascinated by the process and the teamwork," Blum says. "You would think I had seen it all."
Byron Cohen
Photographer: Byron Cohen
Submitter: Structural Preservation Systems, Hanover, Md.
Fitted with a safety harness, Cohen climbed with a crew to the work platform ringing a California powerplant's reinforced-concrete chimney. After the platform was raised to its working height, he took this shot of a worker applying fiber-reinforced polymer.
James Matthews
Photographer: James Matthews
Submitter: Sung Chiu, Welbro Building Corp., Maitland, Fla.
"I am not an artist," protests Matthews, a project engineer in Orlando. "Every one of these shots has a defect," he says, of his still-lifes from the jobsite. This captures poorly pressed wedges on post-tension anchors, but, as Chiu saw, they also capture a touch of art.
Aaron Bales
Photographer: Aaron Bales, New Vision Photography, Kansas City, Kan.
Submitter: J. E. Dunn Construction, Kansas City
H&R Block's $137-million, 573,000-sq-ft world headquarters in Kansas City is rising to 17 floors, giving Bales strong material for Dunn's Website.
R. Scott Lewis
Photographer: R. Scott Lewis
Submitter: ACCO Engineered Systems, Glendale, Calif.
When Lewis saw the color and light around a welder in ACCO's shop, he started to shoot, trying several angles. "When I saw the smoke I knew that was going to be it....I was exceptionally pleased with the red, white and blue," he says.
Elizabeth O'Brien
Photographer: Elizabeth O'Brien
Submitter: EIO photo, Somerville, Mass.
An ironworker proudly shows off the work his trade is doing at Trinity Boston luxury condominiums in Boston. The photo is called: "The House that Mat Bulit."