32 foot diameter water wheel on grounds of the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site located in Elverson, PA. Iron production at Hopewell Furnace required a blast of air to bring the heat of the furnace above 2800 degrees (Fahrenheit). The water wheel supplied the power for this air blast by pumping a pair of pistons inside two blowing tubs. Compressed air moved from the blowing tubs into a receiving box between the tubs, and then through a long pipe to enter the furnace through the tuyere, a cone-shaped nozzle attached to the end of the pipe. The water wheel at Hopewell Furnace has a long sorted history which you can read about on this page.
Shooting this wheel posed some challenges since there was very bright sun entering the wheel house from both the bottom left and the top right while the wheel itself was very dark and in the shadows. The wheel was also in constant motion which ruled out traditional multi-frame bracketed HDR photography. I also had limited angles to shoot this from because of the fence in the foreground. I ended up shooting it as a single RAW image, used Photomatix Pro to convert it to pseudo-hdr to bring out the detail in the shadows on the wheel and even out some of the blown out highlights from the sun entering the wheel house then applied the Topaz Adjust plugin to bring out some more of the wood grain details on the supporting wood.
A wagon filled with coal under the overhang of a barn on the 848 acre grounds of the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site located in Elverson, PA. Coal was used at one point in the furnace’s history to heat and melt the iron during the forging process. The wagons were drawn by horses kept on the furnace grounds. The Hopewell Furnace site features original buildings, barns, houses and furnaces from when this area was a working ironworks operation from 1771-1883. This was one of four historic Berks County locations I shot on Sunday 5-24-2009.
For more information on visiting the Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site visit their web site.
