Project 17 of 17
Westgate Cafe
Cafés · Salmon Arm, British Columbia
Eleven aerial takes. Three photographs. Nine minutes, sixteen seconds.
Westgate Cafe is a breakfast and bakery café in Westgate Public Market at 2090 10th Ave SW, Salmon Arm, British Columbia, and the banner on its roof says it opens at 7am every day.
Atom2Adam Studio flew eleven takes and made three photographs from the air in nine minutes and sixteen seconds of one early afternoon; the café stayed open, and its neon says so in every take close enough to read it. The page starts at the white cup painted on its sign and climbs through the market's painted wall to Mount Ida and the west side of Salmon Arm. The cup, the four windows, the painted wall, the mountain, the west side.
- Subject
- Westgate Cafe, a breakfast and bakery café in Westgate Public Market, 2090 10th Ave SW, Salmon Arm, British Columbia. The banner on its roof reads OPEN 7am EVERYDAY.
- Intent
- Make a café in a market beside the highway look like a morning worth the stop: begin at the cup on its sign, end on the valley around it.
- Seen
- A white cup on a saucer in a dark circle, four windows framed in red and blue, a lit OPEN sign, a banner on a yellow rail, a red steel gable over the market door, a wall of painted bands, four lanes of highway, fields, Shuswap Lake and Mount Ida.
- Made
- Eleven aerial takes and three photographs from the air, all from outside, between 1:45 and 1:55 in the afternoon by the drone's own clock. Nothing closed for the camera: the neon in the window reads OPEN.
I
The cup
Head-on toward the painted cup, the banner above it.
Westgate Cafe's own page puts its cookies, muffins, pastries and breads in four words, “Made fresh, in-house daily,” and the banner on its roof gives the hour: OPEN 7am EVERYDAY. So the page begins where the sign does its quietest work, at a white cup on a saucer with three curls of steam, painted in a dark circle ringed in white between Westgate Cafe and Breakfast & Bakery, and the camera flies straight at it.
The café is four windows wide. The market it stands against is forty thousand square feet.
II
The four windows
Four windows in red and blue, the neon lit.
The drone made its three photographs at 1:53 in the afternoon, across fifty seconds, each lower than the last: 7.3, then 6.4, then 5.2 metres above where it took off. The four windows are framed in red and blue, and in the last one the neon reads OPEN in every take close enough to read it. Nothing closed for the camera.
Forty seconds earlier: the café beside the market's gable.
Along the orange front to the red steel gable.
III
The painted wall
Back off the roof and down to the painted front.
Westgate Public Market describes itself in two lines of its own: “40,000 square ft. Retail, Food, Services, Recreation,” and “The open design concept features murals, brightly colored merchant stalls, and a water feature.” Its merchant list names fourteen businesses, from Striped Pole Barber and Gym of Rock to Shuswap Cider Co, and Westgate Cafe Breakfast & Bakery is one of them. Outside, the metal wall is painted in sweeping bands of yellow, red, blue, green and white, so the camera backs off the roof and comes down until the whole painted front stands behind the café.
The first photograph: café, gable, lot and Mount Ida.
Three-quarters on: the café, the painted wall, the gable.
IV
The mountain
Up past the banner, over the roof, out to Mount Ida.
British Columbia's geographical names office lists Mount Ida as “Just S of Salmon Arm” and adopted the name on 3 November 1932. The coordinates in the drone's own photographs put its summit 5.9 kilometres away, a little west of due south, which is why it stands over the market's roof in all three. So the camera rises past the banner, over that roof and out across the fields to meet it.
The whole front, Mount Ida standing over the roof.
V
The west side
In high over Highway 1 toward the market roof.
The Salmon Arm Economic Development Society describes the market as “tucked out on the west side of Salmon Arm.” The Province's Salmon Arm West project on Highway 1 was complete on June 30, 2023, “widening a 2.2 km section of highway to four lanes from 1st Ave. SW to 10th Ave. SW in Salmon Arm,” and the market's address is on 10th Ave SW. Salmon Arm counted 19,432 people in 2021 and takes its name from the Salmon Arm of Shuswap Lake. The last takes climb until the highway, the fields, the roof and the mountains share one frame.
Once around the market, the fields behind it.
Across the highway and the fields to Shuswap Lake.
It begins at one painted cup. It ends with Mount Ida standing over the whole of it.
Back and up until the market is small in the valley.
Over the fields to the lights and the road into town.
Detail → Whole
Westgate Cafe ends. 17 projects in the collection.
