Posts tagged aerial photographs
Aerial photo comparisons of before & after – the CBD
Many of the CBD demolitions were mandated under the CERA emergency powers. This meant that those demolitions were carried out quickly so it was important to capture the changes for the research archive before too many buildings were demolished. Ross regularly walked the CBD to photograph the changes from April 27 2011. Our first aerial shoot was arranged in October 2011 after several months of feverish demolition activity.
It was particularly important to include Cathedral Square in this comparison as it was, and hopefully will again be, the centre of the city from which most activity radiates.
The top image was taken from that first aerial shoot so there are already “holes” showing up where buildings had been demolished in the 8 months since the most damaging earthquake in February 2011.
However the lower image taken in October 2014 shows a very different story. Almost all the CBD demolitions are complete leaving over 80% of the land vacant.
There are plenty of signs of rebuild activity starting. When the next photo shoot occurs in six months time there’ll be an abundance of changes to see.
Aerial Photos of Christchurch
We started flying over Christchurch in October 2011, and we could see straight away that it would be a great way to record the changes in the city, particularly the changes to residential housing. Both the loss of houses in the Residential Red Zone (RRZ) around the river and in the Port Hills, Lyttelton and Kaiapoi and also the new housing areas being built in surrounding areas: Prestons, Kaiapoi, Rangiora, West Melton, Rolleston, Lincoln, Prebleton, Halswell & Wigram Skies.
From the start, the main aim of the photo sequence was to accumulate a long term research repository of photos beginning in September 2010. Ideally the sequence will continue until the rebuild of the city is substantially complete. It was always expected that this would take years which became more like decades as the earthquakes continued, so it would be a long term project.
During the two years of feverish demolition activity to remove most of the dangerous & severely damaged building & make the city safe we spent about four days a month taking photos in the CBD & RRZ. When that phase was substantially completed, we reduced the frequency of the photo shoot to 2 weeks once every six months, as rebuild is much slower than demolition.
Over the years we have undertaken 10 aerial photo shoots. The early shoots were paid for by the National Library as part of the initial commission that Ross held to photograph the impact of the earthquakes. Three of these have been generously sponsored by private donations, including followers of our Facebook page CHCH EQ Photos. We have paid for the majority of the shoots ourselves, out of our commitment to this long term project.
The following photo is a before & after view of the Dallington RRZ where the two photos were taken 3 years apart, one from the first aerial shoot & one from October 2014. This clearly shows the effect of the severe shaking & liquefaction on areas close to the Avon River. Many areas in the lower reaches of the river were similarly affected.
On February 21st we updated the aerial photos of Christchurch flying over the central city, along the river suburbs, Lyttelton and Sumner. View more photos here.
The Horseshoe Lake area has about 600 homes circumscribed by a loop of the River and zoned red. It was an area of well tended gardens and homes, with the lovely walk by Horseshoe Lake close to all. Now it looks rather unkempt and forlorn as many homeowners are living elsewhere as the deadline of February 2012 gets closer. We recorded these aerial photographs on 13th December, in order to have a baseline to compare the changes over the next few months against. See more photos here