Had a visitor in my neighborhood today. I’ve already professed my fondness for gunpowder, but hydraulic anything is pretty neat too.
I spent some time a while back watching a tower crane assembled and I finally get how they add sections to make them taller; but now I have another crane mystery. How do these things work? I know how hydraulics work, but these big telescoping booms make my head itch. I know there’s not one big hydraulic ram inside the boom, that won’t work. They have to be integrated into the sections somehow. Where are the rams and lines and what do they look like? What’s pushing against what? If you know of a good cut-away illustration, please link to it as a comment, I need to know this.
I asked the guy working on it and he started explaining hydraulics. After trying to explain my question I felt like I was asking a squirrel about how a tree gets water up from the roots and he keeps showing me the acorns. Besides, I didn’t want to pester a guy with ten-pound wrench in his hand working a crane that probably costs $500 and hour.
Back to the picture: what did I do here? I centered the subject because I wanted to show the weight of the tackle — you don’t get to see this end of a crane much either. By centering an image, it makes it a little jarring, which is bad for nature & people, but it makes sense here.
This crane has seen some use. The industrial scuffed-up nature influenced me to give it a “direct positive” look: that’s the torqued-out contrast and saturation. I think it reminds me of Legos, so the color processing goes with the giant-toy appeal of the crane. I took it a step further and gave you a larger image than I usually do as well to add to the effect I’m going for. I’m trying to recreate for you the experience I had when I wandered out for my walk and found this massive machine jammed into my narrow little street & hemmed in by trees.
I hope you’ve been inspired to get some serious work done this Friday. Hop up into that big gear and crank — ’cause tomorrow’s Saturday!
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Cool, in your face kind of look. I like it.
[...] So what is the effect I’m applying to the image? It’s called Direct Positive. It’s mimicking the old photography technique of developing print negatives in slide chemicals (I could possibly be wrong on this, it’s been a long time). The effect is saturated colors, blown-out blues and wicked contrast. Now it can all be done in post with photoshop or lightroom. Lightroom actually has a preset for it and I use it to start from and then tweak it to match the image. I’ve done this before. [...]
Well, this is cool pic! And I thank you for these explainations of your how’s and why’s. This really helps a novice like myself.
[...] Oct. 26 Hydraulic Crane - post processing gone crazy and no one has yet answered my question. [...]
I like cranes too! They are awesome! I like moving big things around.