A Diary of Work at Ani: Part II
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.
Second Day
After having our breakfast in the hotel I went to visit Kars Museum Director Necmettin Alp. I spoke with him earlier on the phone about our work but I wanted to visit him to give details on what we will be doing at the site. He promised full cooperation and wanted me let him know if we need any assistance.
We were at the site at around 10:30 am. The museum guards welcomed us in a friendly way. We planned to setup a control network today and tomorrow, so we can move around the site freely. We first checked the existing control points that will be used for establishing a control network close to the church. After locating such points we planned for new stations. In the previous survey projects, several control stations have been established. However all of them were removed by local villagers who thought that the station markers actually showed the locations of a treasure. So in order to avoid a similar situation we decided to establish the new ones more stabilized. Therefore we established the new permanent points on big and steady rocks by steel nails. They are almost impossible to remove and hardly seen unless carefully looked.
After establishing several markers we started the GPS survey by placing two receivers on existing points in different directions. We used the third receiver on the newly established points. This method is called static survey, which is the most accurate way of GPS surveying.