Changing the face of Charleston:
Building of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge
Frank's Home Page
Karpeles Museum display's my story of Building the Ravenel Bridge:
Oct 17, 2007 - ? (Permanent Exhibit)
Archive of building stories
Exploring digital sketches
Unbuilding the Grace and Pearman Bridges
Visit our Photo Essays
Click for all web page building segments
I enjoy hearing from you. If you have comments and suggestions, write me.

Highlights
As seen from the Aquarium
East Bay on ramp
The Last Shark Fin
Closing the main span gap
Paving the bridge
The last stay cable
Opening Events
Engineering Challenges
Stories of Bridge Folks
Erecting Steel
Building Bridge Blog

These photos reflect the relationship between light, weather and the bridge. When I take my photos, I usually just capture what is happening under the existing conditions. It turns out, in retrospect, that going out each week was a great way to explore different bridge personalities that appear from variations of lighting and weather conditions.

Photo Compositions: Groups of related photos

Digital Sketches
Recently I started exploring image transformations to create pencil-like sketches. Here you will find some interesting examples. Mostly using the sobel filter in Gimp.

May 27, 2005:

A digital sketch of the approach view

May 25, 2005:
Sunset as seen from the new bridge and evening paving

May 25, 2005:Stiching photos together. Sunday I made several photos of the Charleston scene and discovered an open source program (hugit) that will match reference points. So here is my first attempt at building a panorama

A better stitching exercise - fewer indications of the boundary of the image components

May 22, 2005:Paving at night

May 21, 2005:A digital sketch of Wilbur and Leon and the Meeting Street Interchange

Looking from Mt Pleasant: May 18

A sketch of the East Bay Approach: May 14

May 8, 2005: sunrise

April 11, 2005:
Views from Mt Pleasant: quiet shadows across the pylon bases

April 3, 2005:
A cargo ship passing uner the new Cooper River Bridge

April 2, 2005:
A touch of old and a touch of new

March 31, 2005:
A dolphin

March 26, 2005:
Early morning fog

March 22, 2005:
An early morning on an otherwise gloomy day

and a view of the ungap from the west pylon

Sunday March 20, 2005:
A morning view of the bridge without the west tower crane

March 8, 2005: Bolting the last splice plate

March 6, 2005: A crane in waiting

and another morning view from my bicycle

March 5, 2005: My man, Wilbur

February 23, 2005:

A view from under the deck

Sunday February 13, 2005: Sunrise and the New Cooper River Bridge (7:23 am)
Everytime I look at this photo, I feel a sort of calm. My attention is drawn to the small barge anchored in the lower right. I do not really understand the calm this photo conveys. In many respects, it reflects the calm I feel from the workers when I visit the main deck.

A bit of fun with image processing. I filtered the February 13 morning image with a cubic intensity filter - which alters the color balance. Note how the reddish horizon in the original image (lower) becomes blue in the filtered image (immediately below). This is another hidden benifit of the bridge project. I have been introduced to all sorts of digital darkroom techniques (usually to fixed some mistake I made). In this case, I sort of like this exchange of colors.

February 11, 2005: A view of the west pylon from the top of the east pylon

January 8, 2004: Sunrise and the gap

December 19, 2004:Morning sun kisses the bridge

December 16, 2004:Night

October 17, 2004 A casual conversation

September 12, 2004 Fog

July 21, 2004: Fog

June 27, 2004: From my bicycle

March 7, 2004: Morning sunrise

February 22, 2004: Across the bow

January 17, 2004: Morning glow

January 13, 2004: A morning sunrise

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Attribution: C. Frank Starmer from http://ravenelbridge.net

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