Hoffman Covered Bridge

This is the Hoffman Covered Bridge in the Oregon Willamette Valley, one of many in the area. This is my WWP entry for the “Heritage” event.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab.)

In choosing this bridge for the event, I visited four different covered bridges in the area. Several had an open style, which was less interesting since so much of the view was outside the bridge. One other was more enclosed but had louvered windows, so was very dark inside. Also, all the rest were fairly busy. This complicates the process of taking a VR, since I need to be in one spot for several minutes to take all the pictures. So all in all, this seemed the best choice.

From my WWP description:

Built in 1936, this is the Hoffman covered bridge over Crabtree Creek. Covered bridges are common in this part of the country, in fact Oregon has the largest collection in the West. The ready supply of timber led naturally to wood being used as a primary construction material, and the frequently wet weather led to the practice of covering them in order to increase their useful life. Both of these characteristics relate to local conditions that largely influenced the history of the region, and so reflect some elements of the area’s heritage.

This particular bridge spans a local fishing spot, and while I was scouting it, people were sitting on the window edges, dangling fishing lines into the river below. Although there’s little traffic in the area now, the bridge is still used. However, during the two visits I made for this picture, I never saw another car.

The biggest challenge with this picture was the extreme dynamic range of the bright scene outside the bridge, and the relatively dimmer interior. I used global HDR processing, but am less than happy with the final result. It took a lot of iterations to get something even this good. I retrospect, I’ve had better luck in the past when combining a couple different exposures by hand.

I’d like to take this picture again, but with the sun overhead instead of coming in at an angle. And perhaps with a cloudy sky, so the light is less extreme. It would be fun to mask out the exterior portions and replace them with something more interesting. In fact, perhaps this could be used to illustrate the difference between, for example, natural and spiritual realities. Not a great representation, of course, because this would present them as separate domains, when I think of them more as overlaid. Not nearly as separate as we tend to think of them.

However, there is still a difference, which implies a transition or movement between them. Some think of this movement as something exotic, but the reality is that we experience the spiritual all the time, just often don’t recognize it. The trick isn’t having an exotic experience, but rather seeing the eternal in our everyday lives. So although such separation isn’t really a good representation, it does allow each to be illustrated on its own. Perhaps the eternal is a vision of peace, power, etc. And the temporal side is the grunge we’ve come to take as normal. So the question becomes how come we miss the eternal so easily, and how can we change that…

I’ll have to think about this some more. But other than this, although I liked the topic of a covered bridge, I don’t think I’ll take any more.