Molson Coors Beer Fermentation Tank Move , Hamilton, Ontario Docks- January 7, 2011

On Friday night, January 7, 2011, a convoy of some 50 vehicles began to transport six huge beer fermentation tanks from the Hamilton, Ontario docks area to the Molson Coors brewery at Carlingview drive in Toronto, Ontario, a distance of approximately 108 Km (65 miles). Each tank is a monster: 45 meters (110 feet) long, 7 meters (22 feet) in diameter and capable of holding the equivalent of approximately 1.4 million bottles of beer (feeling thirsty?). By the time you account for the height of the flatbeds, the total height of the load is about 8.7 meters (27 feet). The sheer size meant the convoy had to move at walking speed, and along with the need to temporarily take down power lines, traffic lights, street lights, etc., as they moved forward as well as restore them after passing by (about 1,200 power lines alone, I was told by a crew member), and the restriction that they move only between 21:00 and 06:00, meant a 4-day journey as initially planned, and, as of Monday January 10, 2011, expected to take double that time due to weather-related delays. Hamilton was chosen as the port of landing for the tanks since route from the Toronto docks to the brewery did not permit loads of that size to pass.

These show one of the Challenger Motor Freight tractors and some of the 6 tanks (one per tractor). What you do not see are the power line crew vehicles, the police vehicles, the various support crews, etc. This was taken in the dock area where the convoy was staged and shows the site shortly before departure. The tanks have the appearance of rocket boosters as opposed to their more mundane purpose. (For more photos in a new tab, visit my flicker phtotostream at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwvraets/ )

These images were each created from a 3 shot auto bracket (+/-2EV ISO400) using a tripod-mounted Nikon D5000. The Nikon was fitted with an 18-55mm VR lense set at 18mm for the tractor close-up and 26mm for the panoramic view of the tanks, f/5.6. The resulting images were processed with Luminance/Qtpfsgui to produce the base HDR image using the setup information embedded in the file name and as shown below. The base HDR image was then loaded into GIMP along with the 3 images used to make the base HDR, and by selective deletion using a soft brush, various parts of the base HDR image were replaced by corresponding elements of the original images. This was done to repair the artifacts arising from HDR processing and tone-mapping, as well as to get a more natural look in certain areas. Once done, the resulting multi-layer adjusted image was flattened, border added, and, scaled to 1024 high for posting.

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Qtpfsgui 1.9.3 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Mantiuk
Parameters:
Contrast Mapping factor: 0.1
Saturation Factor: 1.2
Detail Factor: 3
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PreGamma: 1