Billy Joel may not be able to tell the difference between the Pennsylvania towns of Bethlehem and Allentown but those who work and/or live in the Lehigh Valley certainly know which plant the song refers to. Steel customers wanted cheaper foreign steel. Unions wanted wages and benefits the company couldn’t afford. In the end, everybody lost.
“…So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
And chromium steel…”
You can see a video of the pouring of steel at this plant (Bethlehem Steel Blast Furnace C) made back in the 1990s here.
I shot this as seven bracketed RAW frames and then combined them into an HDR with Photomatix Pro and finally, tone mapped that image to create the final product.
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