A Diary of Work at Ani: Part V

In August 2011, the Istanbul-based documentation company Solvo-Tek, lead by Mr. Bora Sayin, completed phase 1 of work at the Church of the Savior. Work included documenting the structure and its site using digital photography, terrestrial laser scanning, GPS survey, and digital HDR panoramic photography. The team photographed and scanned the standing remains of the church and the fallen wall sections in-situ before their removal to an area adjacent to the church next spring. Panoramic photographs of the general area were also taken to put the site within the general context of the larger site and its relationship to other structures, such as the neighboring cathedral and the surrounding topography.
Fifth Day

We planned the laser scans in different phases in order to use the sunlight as much as possible. So we started from the inside of the church, which faces east. Due to the fallen building remains, we had to setup several different locations in order not to miss any details inside.

The first phase was somehow hard due to extreme numbers of visitors. Visitors often disrupted our work. We usually try to prevent visitors from getting into the survey site because they not only obstruct the data collection but also can disturb the prisms and scan targets. Since this site is wide open from any directions it was really hard to track each and every visitor. Some of them were really curious and wanted to play with our targets, so we had to stop several times.

The weather got really hot, especially in the afternoon. In order to avoid a heat stroke we tried to stay in shadows but it was not easy while tracking visitors. By the end of the day we had used all our water, about 15 liters.