Crossfield, Alberta

In Crossfield, Alberta, located between Olds and Calgary near the Queen Elizabeth highway, is a gas station from 1935. It has been added to over the past decades with an additional floor and service bay. An additional tall service bay for school busses was added in the 50’s. The owner and tenant were generous with their permission to capture this building as a 3D model for the art project.

To scan this building we used land-based photogrammetry and a drone. Over time we have developed a method for capturing the details of the roof and signage with the drone using manual placement of the camera. The software we use to create the model from these two photo sets is Agisoft Metashape. In that software we use markers to identify unique points of interest in both sets of photographs to align them and merge the results to create the model.

This station is unique because of it’s history of renovation. The tenant, Crossfield Auto Glass, had an old photograph of the original building which consisted of a small building with the main storefront and office, with no service bays. If you compare it to the model you can see that it has changed significantly over the past decades.

With the town of Crossfield updating their main street with new wider sidewalks and paving, this location is about to see more transformations.

We photographed this building on June 23, 2021.