Lehigh Hanson makes products that are everywhere around you in buildings, roads, systems that provide our homes with water, and take water, and other gross stuff. They also work on other critical public and private projects from hospitals to airports. Since their products aren’t frequently in a very staged or pretty conditions, not to mention they are often covered up and taken for granted, having photographers around to capture how their products are needed and used can be tricky. Needless to say a retoucher is a necessity to help the images show what’s needed to be communicated.
PLEASE Note and USE the <SLIDERS> to see Before & After images. Best viewed on a desktop!
These pressure pipes needed to look as pretty as possible, yet not pristine. They are after all an industrial product. Prettier, but not perfect became a frequent request. This images was one of their favorites for brochure covers and websites. Extending the sky helped it fit in more vertical layouts.
The Giant Green Monster Pipe was a large filter/separator that was strapped to a wide-load truck, shipped and buried soon after it’s paint job, (Think processing all the waste water from a large theme park sized parking lot). The photo needed to be submited along with blue prints, for engineering awards. I’m proud to say it won. I really liked the Indiana Jones-esque warehouse it was painted in, but it was deemed too distracting and all the hanging insulation was removed. I guess this example just needed to be pretty, not industrial realistic.
A parking lot’s worth of 6′ tall concrete pipes needed to be swept out and buffed out a bit. It now looks like a safer place to play, even though I’m sure some hard hat wearing security guards would not agree with me.
I’m not sure what is down in this deep hole, but it apparently requires a large concrete pipe. I was reminded of how un-fun removing images behind any open metal fencing is. Also notice the random trash that was removed from the site, as well as some digital spray painting.
I don’t know about you, but all the new safety measures that are all over new public buildings aren’t exactly pretty. I’m sure the interior designers did a great job minimizing them. Since these photos were used to show off the smooth interior concrete pillars and molding, safety hazards aren’t an issue. Removing the pot lights and just lighting the whole space better more evenly, let’s the concrete craftsmanship shine.
Creating works of art with Hanson’s many different kinds of bricks was the concept for this creation. The Art Director selected a few different, more earthy toned, master pieces, and then I applied the lattice of mortar and shifted the colors of the art work to be more within the bricks actual natural color range.
Ideally this piece of cover art work would of been created in a 3D program, but the budget and timeline did not allow. I was able to use the mortar from the previous project and skewed the perspectives to somewhat match the planes of the mountain sculpture. Without the quickly rendered brick’s perspectives, the whole image fell flat and uninspiring.
The next three images are all from the same job site. Hanson was able to help the new UT Southwestern campus collect rainwater in this concrete cistern so they could later use to water their grass. The images were cleaned up to showcase the “Green Ideas/Ideals” not a impossible to beautify construction site.
This photo shows off the scale of the concrete vaults used to make this reservoir. Be sure to notice the tan building in the back top right of the photo. It will make the next photo make a lot more sense.
The shaded side of the building where the chain link fence is resting, is the approximate location of the above two photos. I took this photo (along with the other two) on my own time so I could show you how this project looked like when it was finished. Thank goodness it had a decent sky on a pretty day. I try to keep my project estimates as well… which was $0 in this case.
No, look at the scalable concrete BRIDGE, not the murky brown water and weed riddled rocks!?
Yes, that’s my shadow. Showcasing the meter vault was a bit trickier than I expected. Climbing on top of large concrete pipes is one thing, lugging my sensitive expensive camera up, is another. Not to mention having a large uncooperative subject matter that doesn’t respond to a photographer’s directions. It still beats getting a toddler well groomed, placed, and to smile on cue though.
Hindsight being the perpetual 20/20, the muddy puddles would of been easier to remove than the recently spread brown dirt. When you ask for dirt, you just assume that it will match the dirt color that was EVERYWHERE else & well traveled on texture-schmeckture. Oh well, it’s all water under the concrete bridge now.