Heritage Steps

Heritage Steps

1. Why I went out

This was part of a reconnaissance trip in Hornsby. These steps were the second location where I ran data capture, the first being the Picnic Shelter. The location presented itself, so to speak. I had no intention of mapping it, not even as I was walking down the steps. It was such an obvious interesting target.

2. The plan

The plan was to capture clean top-down imagery for an orthophoto, then add a few oblique images and video clips to give the site more context. Unfortunately I missed the capture of video. The capture target was only a section of the entire Heritage Steps as the whole “staircase” is much longer. I chose a relatively small and uniform section for mapping.

3. What actually happened

The nadir imagery was okay in the flying. The surrounding bushland did constrain the height and width of my flight. As such the resulting map is limited in it’s capture of surrounding vegetation. The obliques produced some very attractive cinematic shots.

4. What came out of it

The images produced an acceptable orthophoto on the first run and so I did not experiment with removing images. There is some warping towards the bottom of the steps unfortunately, however the important details of the steps were present in the output and so I decided to continue with the project. The 3D output was very interesting given the nature of the object, the rising stair case with each individual stair. This could have been improved, no doubt, with more images taken.

5. What I learned

A similar lesson from the previous project – more photos should be taken and taken to an overlapping structure.

The project did open my eyes to the possibility of different sites, more interesting and unique subjects to document.

6. What I’d change next time

It was disappointing not to get the video of the site. Having a checklist would ensure that I get all the data I can in the future. Otherwise I would not change all that much.

7. Where this goes next

With a site similar to these steps there needs to be purpose beyond the fact that it looks interesting. Condition observations, or perhaps documenting degradation over time are possible scenarios for such a site. Improving the data capture process so that it is repeatable and can produce data that can be compared from one period of time to a later one is a clear value add for future projects.

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