Seriously, an orange vest will get you into the most interesting places. Here we are on top of the North Fork dam. Alright, I admit, the orange vest was more a condition of our being there as opposed to the reason we were there. But my initial statement still holds true, even if it isn't wholly accurate in this case. A hardhat, construction cones and a sense of belonging there also can be great opportunity-makers.
Tags: Hasselblad Hasselblad 500C film square analog dam North Fork dam Oregon Pacific Northwest PGE power houses
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About a month ago I took part in my fourth powerhouse plein air art jam. This was a project I got into six years ago with the now-dismantled Hawley powerhouse in Oregon City, followed by the Bull Run powerhouse in Sandy, then Oak Grove/Three Lynx in Estacada and now the North Fork dam in Estacada. The project originally started to bring artists of various methods together to document historic powerhouse buildings (Hawley was 100 years old at the time) before they are destroyed. I was invited in because of my pinhole photography work and so my emphasis early on was the pinhole camera, though I incorporated other cameras into my photographing. At Oak Grove, for example, my favorite work was all done with my Hasselblad. But the pinhole is still my main focus, then and now. At some point the project shifted from decommissioned powerhouses to active ones (Oak Grove was my first active powerhouse). PGE is pretty cool about the whole project and grants an incredible amount of access to these sites. It is very refreshing to be a photographer and instead of being ushered away from sensitive sites, instead to be actively invited into them. In my opinion, PGE gets a giant gold star for the help here.
Anyway, North Fork was the first actual dam I have done for this project. All the other powerhouses were hydro stations with giant turbines but powered either by a nearby waterfall or by giant pipes funneling water down a hill from a nearby reservoir. So it was a neat additional element to be able to wander across the dam as well as through the powerhouse itself, which is the building just above and to the right of center, you can see the two turbines atop it. Most of the powerhouse at North Fork is below ground, nestled in the foundation of the dam and below water level.
Anyway, I am going to share a couple of images from this day of photography on the dam.
On an unrelated note, the Blue Moon Camera staff show opens tomorrow night! Be there... or don't.
Saturday, August 3rd 6-9pm
Eastbank Commerce Center
1001 SE Water Ave
Portland, OR 97214
Tags: Innova 6x9 film North Fork Estacada dam hydroelectric analog 6x9 Oregon Pacific Northwest electricity
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Relative to say... the Hoover Dam or other such dams. Of course, relative to me, or my car, it is pretty vast. So this view, to give you a bit of the sense of scale for some of the other images to follow. Again, you can see the power house in the bottom middle of the frame. The dam backs water up behind it where the weight of the water forces it through pipes at the base of the dam which spin the turbines, creating electricity. Unlike the other powerhouses I visited, the turbines here are outside the powerhouse under those giant metal cylinders. Behind those cylinders you can see the various transformers. If you look straight up the dam from there you can see the base of what are giant cranes. Whenever they need to work on a turbine they lift the covers off with those cranes to get at the turbine itself. Those cranes also marked the boundary of a sensitive area on the top of the dam for us. We were allowed to stop above the transformers and photograph over the edge but we couldn't use a tripod or any metal easels or chairs there, for if they fell over the edge and landed on a transformer and bridged the gap between wires.... well just remember what happens when you cross the beams. So when we were working in that area, we had to lay our tripods down well away from the edge before doing any photography.
Off to the left you can see the massive spillways, only one of which was open at the time to relieve pressure from backed up water that cannot be displaced by normal dam operations. The road to the powerhouse runs through a tunnel under this spillway, which is a pretty interesting experience to walk with all that water rushing over your head.
The dam was too big even for the Fuji 617. This shows only about 2/3 of the dam itself as I am standing on the far sweeping edge looking back across.
Tags: Fuji G617 pano panoramic North Fork Dam Estacada dam hydroelectric powerhouse turbines film analog 6x17 Blue Moon Camera Oregon Pacific Northwest damscape
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The complimentary pinhole image to the one I posted this morning from the opposite side of the dam. I know it probably won't mean much to you, but I am pretty pleased with my ability to line the corner of the handrail up just so. It is hard to get something like that symmetrical when you don't have a viewfinder. It took a little humming and hawing and drawing imaginary lines from the center of my camera. But it all worked out. :-)
Tags: Innova 6x9 pinhole film analog dam North Fork hydroelectric lo-fi giant masses of concrete Estacada Oregon PGE Pacific Northwest wooden cameras Kodak Ektar 100
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North Fork Dam. Pentacon six TL. Kodak Ektar 100. Oregon weather.
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