This is a challenging year to be a photographer. Okay, it’s a challenging year to be anything. Before March, I finally arrived at a point where I felt some improvement in approaching people and making good images of them. The shoot I did at our town’s local ice fishing contest was among my most popular because of both the subject matter and the people. The last few months, I’ve posted daily but it’s been a steady rotation of still lifes and landscapes with the occasional small animal or bird for variety.
As social distancing rules relaxed in the US, I hoped to be able to get out to some local cities and the coast to try to get some variety in my images. Unfortunately, the news has reported that the coast is jammed with people and that parking restrictions aimed at limiting the number of people have caused problems. At this time, even though our area continues to have a relatively low incidence of COVID-19, other parts of the US that relaxed restrictions are seeing an increased incidence of coronavirus. The safe money says to stay close to home.
For a while, I’ve considered trying to photograph as many of New Hampshire’s fifty-four historic covered bridges as I can. It’s not easy. They are spread fairly far out. To get the four located in the northernmost part of the state along the Canadian border, I have to drive three and a half hours one way to arrive there. But, there’s not a lot else to do this summer. And let’s face it, this is something I can do without encountering throngs of people.
Using websites, I made a list of all the historic covered bridges and their locations. It’s easy to see groupings that go together logically for a single trip in which I could photograph three or four bridges at a time. And certainly, there will be other things to see along the way. The photographs here are of bridges that I had previously visited and made images of in my travels. They are the “low hanging fruit”. So let’s see if I can get all of them, shall we?
In these times we all have to work safely with what’s available to us.
All of the historic bridges that I’ve photographed can be seen on a new page at this site called Historic Covered Bridges of New Hampshire. You can find it here.
A worthy subject. I will be checking out your page. I wish North Dakota had more. According to the Internet, we have two, one only an hour from here, the other, clear on the opposite side of the state. 🙂
Thank you. The opposite side of ND would be a long drive.
This is a great idea! I like what you have so far!!
Thank you!
You’re welcome!
It is going to be a different summer, but I am sure you can make the most of it! Thanks for sharing the website, very interesting!
Thank you so much.
‘Walk your horses or pay $2 fine’–that must have been a stiff fine in the day. Beautiful photos, Chris. Florida’s numbers are going sky-high. No wonder, really. Once we ‘gradually’ opened, people went crazy like they had never seen a beach before. Report this morning says 7 lifeguards tested positive. This is never-ending….
People understand open and they understand closed, but they don’t understand open with restrictions. It’s human nature. Sigh Thank you, Lois.
Those bridges are great! And I’m sorry I missed the last few post on your blog…I’m not getting notifications anymore. I’ll try to fix that.
Thank you. That’s okay Ann, WP can be a bit strange at times.
wonderful project and beautiful work, Chris 🙂 these would look great printed too 🙂
covid cases on the rise here too, stay safe while taking your gorgeous photos throughout the summer !!
Thank you, Alex. I went out this morning to make photos. I packed my coffee and snacks with me and really only got within 2 meters of 2 people. It’s good safe photo fun. I hope you and your boys take care and stay healthy.
same here, we packed our lunch and some tea today and went hiking, at the foot of the mountain there were literally crowds of people, like they’ve never seen a mountain before, camping, BBQ-ing, it was more crowded than in the city… so we went up higher, fresh air, good workout too, and no people lol… this is going to be a very challenging summer indeed, Chris! hoping for the best… take care!!
I keep hearing different versions of that same story. Good for you guys getting away from the crowd.
Something I’d like to explore here as well! So far I’ve found one covered bridge 🙂
We have some pretty good websites to help locate the covered bridges. It’s a lot of driving, so grouping them helps.
We have a lot of them in one county here and there’s a website for it too. Just requires time and planning 🙂
That it does.
Buona giornata.. non mi ricordo il tuo nome 😉
Thank you. My name is Chris. You have a good day also.
What a beautiful collection you have so far! Looking forward to following along Chris. All of these are wonderful but i especially love the Contoocook Railroad Covered Bridge that shot against the sky, gorgeous!
Thank you. I made that shot years ago on the way home from a work trip. I remember trying to hike down to that spot in dress shoes. 😂
That’s awesome! You do what it takes to get the shot, I respect that completely!
Thank you, Sandra. Luckily the shoes and I both survived. 😂
I like the new page with the pictures of the bridges, great work!
Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Hopefully, I’ll have some good photos to share.
Unique Blog
Thank you.
I’m so happy you decided to photograph all these beautiful historic bridges, Chris! It’s a great summer photography project and a perfect one to keep you busy and in distance from others during this time. I look forward to see and admire every single one of them! The Contoocook bridge photo looks wonderful! I’m kind of in love with it. 😄
It’s the same around here with the coasts being overly crowded- we don’t have as long a coastline as you so you can imagine how close to each other everybody is. Better to look for isolated places like you’re doing!
Thank you. I hope to get to the coast in early September when the crowds clear out. I’m enjoying this project for the time being.