The E.B. Bain Water Treatment Plant in Raleigh, NC
The Bain Project
www.bainproject.com/
Wandering through the Bain Water Treatment Plant experiencing the Bain Project was exceptionally cool. I lived on the edge and went hand held, opting to leave the tripod in the trunk. It turned out to be a good move since the lighting was pretty good (in most areas of the plant) and I was able to maneuver better and cover more ground without it. I was able to get away with an ISO setting of 200 at f/4.0 and a shutter speed ranging from 1/4 to 1/20 of a second. Fortunately, there were no shortage of things to brace myself against when I took my photos, so they turned out to be damn near tripod quality (patting myself on the back for getting quality RAWs indoors and hand held using a long shutter speed).
I have no idea what kind of equipment I’ve captured in this one. If anyone out there is familiar with it, I’d love to know what you think. There’s nothing exceptional about the composition here. It’s the colors and contrast that make me love how this one turned out.
That looks like a motor-operated valve on top of the pipe. There is an electric actuator that would open and close the valve based on a signal from elsewhere in the plant.
In the background against the wall, I think that is some sort of level instrument. It looks like an open well that would have a float suspended in it, then a levered arm that goes over to some sort of printed linear gauge. As the water would go up and down, the arm would move with it, and some sort of indicator would move up and down the gauge so you could read a value. That is just my best guess based on my experience, but I can’t be sure because it is so largely concealed in the photo.