I recently went to a presentation of photographer, Louis Helbig‘s, aerial photo work of, arguably, the largest construction project on earth – the Alberta Tar Sands. Helbig spent part of last summer shooting the vastly changed landscape of northern Alberta in western Canada from his airplane.

He has one of the biggest and finest collections of accessible aerial footage of this mega project. Some photos, posted with permission:

Louis: “The machinery photo shows some of the world’s largest shovels, dump trucks and bulldozers.  Extraction through open pit mining takes place to depth of about 100 metres. From the air, northern Alberta’s tar sands look like a dirty sandbox with children’s toys crawling hither and thither.”

Louis: “The abstract image details oily tar floating on Suncor’s most recently created tar pond (lake).  Each day, as a byproduct of bitumen extraction, about 1.8 million litres of toxic effluent are produced. This is piped into manmade tar lakes that cover 130 square kms and contain about 5.5 trillion litres. This tar lake is the visual gateway to the tar sands operations in northern Alberta, western Canada.”

See more of Louis’ Alberta Tar Sands photos at egamiimage.ca