Hartland NB Covered Bridge

[Manfred M]

Another shot from this weeks very short trip to the Maritime Provinces; the covered bridge at Hartland New Brunswick, over the St John River. It's claims to be the longest covered bridge in the world at 1282ft (391m). Effectively, it is a long shed covering the single lane roadbed.




It was overcast and there were limited good vantage points to shoot it from, so I did a wide angle cropped shot. I isolated the clouds and brought them out a bit and did a bit of a dark vignette to focus the viewers eyes. I also shot this as a pano, but was not satisfied with my first build.

[Cantab]

Whow, that's a long covered bridge. The clouds especially those on the right give the picture a sense of foreboding.

[teokf]

I would not have known it is a bridge without the caption. I kind of like it but the clouds on the left does not seem in sync with the rest of the cloud. Just my thoughts.

[Manfred M]

I would not have known it is a bridge without the caption. I kind of like it but the clouds on the left does not seem in sync with the rest of the cloud. Just my thoughts.

The clouds on the left are thinner than some of the others and the sun is blasting the light through there, with the clouds acting like a giant diffuser. The give-away is the bright light reflecting on the river. In this case, I did not replace the sky, just darkened it a bit, so this is what the cloud cover was really like when I took the shot.

[John 2]

Interesting and definitely a sense of foreboding. The mono treatment serves this well. I've often wondered what the advantage is in covering these bridges? It can't just be an adopted style given the extra cost involved. Nice shot.

[Manfred M]

It can't just be an adopted style given the extra cost involved. Nice shot.

John - my understanding is that the covers were meant to protect the wooden structural elements of the bridge to extend its lifespan. Rain and weather conditions would result in a lifespan of ten to twenty years, but by adding the covering, they would last a lot longer. The one in the image was built in 1900.

[John 2]

Thanks for that Manfred. Makes sense.

[teokf]

Manfred thanks for clarifying, no wonder my eyes kept trying to figure out what's happening over there 8)

[AB26]

Hi Manfred,

The bridge is splitting the image in two halves, an upper half and a lower half.

Moving closer to the entrance to the bridge and having the bridge lead the eye of the viewer into the right hand third of the image towards the village on the other side with the river flowing “out” of the image on the far right would probably have been a beter composition.

You would like the viewer to have an idea of the length of the bridge by having the leading lines narrow down much more towards the exit of the bridge on the other side.

Again, a very good B&W conversion.

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,

The bridge is splitting the image in two halves, an upper half and a lower half.

Moving closer to the entrance to the bridge and having the bridge lead the eye of the viewer into the right hand third of the image towards the village on the other side with the river flowing “out” of the image on the far right would probably have been a beter composition.

You would like the viewer to have an idea of the length of the bridge by having the leading lines narrow down much more towards the exit of the bridge on the other side.

Again, a very good B&W conversion.

Andre – I find your comments particularly interesting because we appear to have gone through a similar thought process and come to rather opposite conclusions.

The key goal I had was to show this long shed-like bridge over the river and give the viewer a real sense of how darn long the bridge really is without resorting to “visual tricks”. By that I mean the viewer should have absolutely no doubt about the scale; which is why I included the houses on the opposite bank and the lamp on the bank I was standing on to help the viewer with scale.

I was looking at presenting the bridge as a bit of a sideways triptych; roughly equal weighting to the sky; the bridge and its supports and the foreground. The cut into thirds was quite deliberate with a bias to the foreground from a balance standpoint.

The reason I did not get closer to the bridge (and I did try some shots closer up) is that the distortion I was getting; a very large bridge presence to a very tiny sliver disappearing towards the opposite bank did not let the viewer fully appreciate the length of the structure. I took some more shots further away from the bridge, at a bend in the river so I could capture more directly on, and while this looks like a technically more accurate view of the bridge, it really did not work compositionally.

This is the fun part of photography; our tastes do vary and do influence our compositional choices.

[pasusan]

Hi Manfred - I've seen lots of covered bridges, but this one is super long! Maybe because I'm used to them this seems like the perfect view to show just how long it is - thanks for sharing it.

[Wavelength]

Very nice shot; i think the other too there are superb images

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured, I would be tempted to tackle this structure with a wide angle lens, only problem I'd probably have to stand in the water to do it justice.

[xpatUSA]

Another shot from this weeks very short trip to the Maritime Provinces; the covered bridge at Hartland New Brunswick, over the St John River. It's claims to be the longest covered bridge in the world at 1282ft (391m). Effectively, it is a long shed covering the single lane roadbed.




It was overcast and there were limited good vantage points to shoot it from, so I did a wide angle cropped shot.

Manfred, I'm curious as to why the "left" end of the bridge got cropped?

[NorthernFocus]

I was really confused at your globe trotting of late until I noticed the date of the OP. Fascinating bridge though.

[Manfred M]

Manfred, I'm curious as to why the "left" end of the bridge got cropped?

Parking lot full of cars is located to the left, In fact I would say really ugly parking lot full of cars. That drove where I cropped the pano.