Notes on Kite Aerial Photography: Photo Gallery
Views of the Hearst Mining Building construction site from an altitude of around
300 feet. (Canon 24-mm, June 2000)
Before going to Europe I found myself on campus one Sunday with a reasonable
wind from the west. I thought it would be interesting to take a few central
campus shots and wondered if I could stage a kite from the small courtyard
between Evans Hall and the Bechtel Engineering Center. From this point I could
place a kite over the intriguing seismic retrofit of John Galen Howard's Hearst
Mining Building. My first try failed. I could get the Rokkaku to fly but the
winds were to variable to loft a camera. I came back the next day and had better
luck in winds that were still quite turbulent.
The
Hearst Mining Retrofit Project is fascinating. Among other improvements, the
designers have specified a complete replacement of the building's foundations
and the installation of a base isolation scheme to protect the building from
future ground movements. This shot shows the temporary staging that supports the
building as the new foundations are built. (Canon A5 digital camera, June 2000)
And
here we have a view of the new foundation on the left and the old on the right (Canon
A5 digital camera, June 2000)
After shooting a couple of
rolls of the retrofit project I took the prints over to the construction office
to share with the project folks. There I lucked into a detailed, and
informative, hard-hat tour being conducted for engineering alumni. They
graciously allowed me to tag along.
An
aerial view of the building's many flues on the left and hard-hatted tourists
entering the building's front entry. (Canon 24-mm left,
May 2000 and Canon A5 digital camera, June
2000)
The Hearst Mining Building, a gift of Phoebe Hearst
near the turn of the century, is one of UC Berkeley's major landmark buildings.
Mining was once major business in California and one in four Berkeley students
were in this major. The Hearst gift, and many that followed it, helped establish
the Beaux Arts motif for campus architecture. The seismic project is going to
great lengths to protect the building from earthquakes of the future.
A
view of my rooftop terrace launching site toward the left of this photo (Canon 24-mm,
May 2000)
[ Home Page | Background | Equipment | Gallery | Maps | Discussion | Others | Search | What's New ]
Comments to author: crisp@socrates.berkeley.edu . All content,
graphics and
images contained throughout are Copyright (C) 1995 - 2005 by Charles C. Benton
and are protected by United States and International copyright laws.
No text, graphic or image may be used whole or in part, individually,
or as part of a derivative work without express written permission.
All rights reserved. Revised: Saturday, June 26, 2010
URL: http://kap.ced.berkeley.edu/gallery/gal163.html