Elan Construction is building the Tsuutʼina Medical Centre on Tsuutʼina Nation, southwest of Calgary. We have been on site 6 times since June. The job is not finished, and neither are we.
The brief fits in 1 line: document the build while it runs. No single shoot day at the end. Repeat visits, each timed to whatever the crew is doing that week.
The situation
Progress work lives or dies on comparison. A drone pass in June only means something when there is a pass in September to put beside it.
This building makes that easy to read. The footprint is a long curve of rooms with round pavilions set along it. From above you can watch every one of them go from formwork to roof.
On 22 June it was footings and pedestals, with the first steel columns standing. By 13 September the crane was setting timber and the crew was out on the roof deck.
How we worked it
Chris McElwee and I shot this one between us. Every visit gets 2 kinds of coverage.
Drone for the record: the full site, the footprint against the highway and the fields, and straight-down passes over the roofs.
Ground for the people: crews placing concrete, setting steel, cutting timber and welding connections. We shoot video and stills on Sony a7 IV and a7 V bodies.
The stills are not an afterthought. Elan gets an edited set from each visit, and every photo on the case study comes from those sets.
