The Sundial Bridge
Sacramento River, Redding, California, USA
June 22, 2009, 2:50 pm PST
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© 2009 G. Donald Bain, All Rights Reserved.
Caption
Redding is an unlikely place for a world famous piece of architecture. But through a chain of events it ended up hiring renowned architect Santiago Calatrava to design a pedestrian bridge over the Sacramento River in Turtle Bay Park, and raising $23 million to pay for it. Pretty impressive for a town of just over 100,000 population. The bridge is 700 feet (213 meters) long and the tower is 217 feet (66 meters) high. The unique design uses a single tower leaning away from the river with sloping cables holding up the glass deck - technically a cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge.
The bridge, as its name implies, is the world's largest sundial. The gnomon (tower) leans out over a semi-circular lawn edged with hour markers. It is only accurate on one day of the year - the summer solstice, when this picture was taken. The shadow can be seen to move, about a foot a minute.
More VR panoramas of the Sundial Bridge, taken soon after it opened, can be seen on my website Don Bain's Virtual Guidebooks.
Location
Lat: 40° 35' 25" N
Long: 123° 23' 45" W
Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.
Equipment
Photographed with an Olympus E-3 digital SLR with an 8mm Zuiko fisheye lens, on a Nodal Ninja VR mount, Really Right Stuff ballhead, and Velbon carbon-fiber tripod.Stitched with PTGui Pro 8.0.2 on a Macintosh Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, retouched with Photoshop CS3.
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