The Great Shapes Of Burlington Bridges
Sailing our boat into through into Hamilton Harbour via the Burlington Canal, a few years ago, we had to wait until the old lift bridge that services local traffic was raised out of our way.
After that, it was clear travel under the tall James N. Allan Skyway, built in the 1980s, that elevates the Queen Elizabeth Way linking Toronto and Fort Erie.
I’ve always been intrigued by the combination of two bridges so close together. So recently I drove with the drone to Burlington to investigate. I was able to locate a good takeoff point on the Lake Ontario side of the bridges.
But there was a problem, which was that the western sun was lighting the far side of the two structures. To capture satisfying images, I would have to fly the drone over to the sunlit harbour side.
Since it’s neither legal nor safe to fly over the tops of moving vehicles, I had to hold my breath and reduce the drone’s altitude till it was very near the water, and pilot it underneath the low lift bridge.
Getting under the Skyway was less of an issue, since it’s a full 120 feet from water level to the bottom of its deck.
After some time taking photographs from the harbour side, I heard a siren and warning horn, and saw that the traffic to the lift bridge had been halted. Now the orange structure began to move upward with a low rumble, just as on the day we waited in the boat.
Flying the drone back under the Skyway, I noticed the intriguing geometric patterns of the lift bridge: steel, water, and sky, and paint old and new. So I took the drone in closer for a look.
One of the qualities of drone photography that I most cherish, is its ability to capture the richness of patterns in the landscape, whether man-made or natural. Here the criss-cross of girders is enhanced by shadows cast by the low December sun. And at this moment, there were no vehicles to distract from the forms.
This is an image you could not achieve from any other platform. Even a helicopter can’t fly that low.
There was a reason, of course, for the bridge to empty and lift, and that was the 225-foot long Canadian bulk carrier Thunder Bay. Having loaded up in the harbour, it was ready to leave for open water. It would travel through the St. Lawrence Seaway into the world’s oceans, to dock within a couple of weeks in Sydney, Australia.
As the freighter approached, I positioned the drone on the lake side of the bridges, a few feet above the middle of the canal and left it hovering there.
At first, the boat was out of drone’s view, in the north section of the harbour. Then as it neared the canal, the captain lined it up precisely to traverse the centre of the narrow waterway.
I took several photographs as the vessel approached the drone, then, to avoid a collision, directed the drone to climb into the air.
Next, I wanted to shoot straight down and capture the patterns of the deck, but I was nervous. The freighter was moving fast, and I had to make everything happen in a few seconds.
What if I went too high, and ruined the drama of the images? What if I went too low, and the drone was struck by the radio antenna mast?
In those few moments, I adjusted the altitude until I figured, eyeballing it, that I reached a safe compromise. As the massive ship passed under the drone, I captured this image which reveals the deck as a repeating pattern of hatch covers.
As the Thunder Bay left the canal for Lake Ontario, I turned the drone back toward the industrial waterfront of Hamilton and captured a final image in the low sun.
In this image, the factories belching smoke seem—ironically—almost magical. The descending ramp from the Skyway cuts diagonally across the photograph into the distance. And the sun sparkles on the blue winter waters of the lake.
Deeply satisfied with my work, I landed the drone, and set off again, in hopes of capturing another set of images further along the Queen Elizabeth Way, at Niagara Falls. That quest began very nicely, but ended sadly, as I’ll describe for you next time.
