LiveCam at
Zion National Park . Utah
LiveCam at Bandon . Oregon
Aug
28
Shooting the Marsh
Filed Under Bandon . Oregon . USA
As part of filming the Bandon Marsh restoration I’ve been hoping to get a good aerial view to show the new channels cut into the old cow pasture. These channels are an effort to restore the natural flow of the ancient Fahy Creek and to insure the entire Marsh can accept the in/out flow of the Pacific tides. What was a bunch of straight line drainage canals have been filled dirt taken out of the new sinuous channels. Although you can only see a few of the new channels in this image, they are numerous and varied in length and width. This is a low resolution version of a flight over the Bandon Marsh. There’s no audio! Select resolution 480 for the best view. You can go full screen if you like but the resolution is dicey.
I am one fortunate, happy photographer to have been able to shoot from this little plane owned and piloted by Joe Pestana (an Air Force fighter pilot). I don’t think I’ve had so much fun in a plane. My hat and headset blew off while shooting with the doors off (happily, they stayed inside the plane) but what a kick!!
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Aug
12
Bandon Marsh Video Project
Filed Under Panoramas
Over the last few weeks the marsh restoration project has been proceeding at a rapid pace. To capture the changes as they occur a time-lapse camera was placed on a pole, 30 feet over the Bandon marshlands. Although there is no footage to view at this point here’s a few shots of the camera and a panorama of the overall location in the marsh. It’ll be fun to watch the video when it’s completed. This restoration is one of the largest, most extensive restoration to a marsh and will ultimately be used as a guide for future marsh reclamation projects.
Click the little [x] to make the panorama go fullscreen. Use the ESC KEY to return.
Ben Nieves atop a 30′ pole to set the time-lapse camera above the refuge.
This area was used for cattle grazing from the 1800’s through 2009. It was once an area with an abundance of native plants and wildlife. It also served as a fishing ground for the Coquille Tribe. Even today there are remains of the ancient fish weirs along the river and within the marsh. For this reason the restoration is being carefully monitored by archeologists and Tribal representatives. At the eastern edge of the marsh remains of a lumber camp have also been unearthed. All of these discoveries are happening because the tidal flat is slowly being re-channeled with backhoes. It’s like a surgical procedure to mend the flow of water within and around the flatlands to bring the ancient tidal marsh back to life. The channels will undulate through the Bandon marsh as they did for thousands of years, before farmers built levees and straight culverts for drainage. When the project is completed, by breaching the levees to allow ocean tides to wash over the land again, native plants and animals will have their home back. 
Here’s a sneak peek at what the finished time lapse will look like. This is just a faction of the video which we’ll use to show how a cattle farm on the river is being helped to return to the estuary it always was. In this brief clip you’ll see how a straightline drainage ditch is being transformed into a meandering stream. In the next few years this place will become the home of wildlife again and a new place for estuarine plants to thrive as the tide sweeps in and out as they had for thousands of years.
What’s this video? I know it’s out of place here, but I had no place to put my all time favorite tv commercial. I don’t know what it is about this video (which is several years old) but I like it and I like that the producers and Chrysler took a chance by producing an expensive commercial which nothing but music and natural sounds. It’s terrific!!
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