HOGBACK BRIDGE OF MADISON COUNTY

[gary ellwein]

I'm too short and heavy to be mistaken for Clint Eastwood. I did spend a day running around Madison County Iowa shooting covered bridges. It was a beautiful Oct. Saturday and the bridges were popular. The constant parade of people made things a bit difficult. This is the Hogback Bridge constructed in 1884 and refurbished in 1992. Covering the bridges preserved the heavy expensive planks. One reference stated longevity was increased by a factor of 10. The current image is one of my few attempts at HDR. The image includes 7 one stop images. PP included Topaz Adjust Spicify with reduced opacity. The white dots on the deck are due to light shining through knot holes in the siding and belong.

[Judy Howle]

Nice work Gary! The details really stand out.

[Hazel Grant]

Nice. We were there a few years ago. Glad they are still intact. Nce HDR. Wondering which camera you used? Does it take 7 HDRs or did you make some adjustments, combining? I have a Nikon D7000 which allows only 3 bracketed photos. Wondering about ways to increase that if possible.

[Dennis Bishop]

This has a great feeling of depth, and I like the strong features. There are a couple great contrasts, too. The angled lines on the sides and top versus the ones running the length of the bridge on the bottom is one. The other is the warmth of the top and coolness of the bottom. Did you do something to make that happen?

Hazel, my Nikon D3s allows me to take up to nine bracketed shots with a maximum of one stop per increment. It might be that your D7000 permits two stops between each exposure. If whatever the camera gives you isn't enough -- and I occasionally run into that with my iPhone -- you can take several sets of shots, each with a different exposure compensation setting. For example, if you get -1, 0, and +1 with the standard setting, changing the exposure compensation to -3 and taking another set of bracketed shots would give you -4, -3, and -2. A +3 exposure compensation would give you the additional higher exposure brackets. (I hope my math is right.) There's another route that I take, too. That's adjusting the exposure with the slider in Adobe Camera Raw to give additional bracketed exposures that can be processed with the out-of-camera ones.

[gary ellwein]

Hazel, I also used a Nikon D3s. Dennis has provided a good work around for you. Dennis, I did nothing to alter the tone.

[Mitch Carucci]

Great image! The eye gets putted right down the tunnel. Interesting textures.

Interesting note about the covered deck lasting longer. Also, I read somewhere that the cylinder created by covering the bridge is structurally very much stronger than a flat bridge. So a great design all around.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Gary, it looks like you've got great "tunnel vision":S3: Nice image, well done.

[Wendy Kates]

Great job...I really like the details and textures. I, too, like the contrasting colors between the top and bottom of the image.

[gary ellwein]

Thanks to all for the look and comments. You have piqued my interest relative to the grey tones of the lower timbers. At first I considered an old fading layer of paint. This does not account for the gradation of the grey from the road bed to mid way up the walls. I wonder if it may be related to the effect of road dust when the bridges were in use. This is limestone country with all unpaved roads covered by the stuff. Calcium carbonate is not inert. It may have had some effect on the wood. Just a thought.

[Dennis Bishop]

Your initial comments about the reasons for covered bridges caught my attention. Now -- with your limestone thought -- I'm really hooked. The first thing I did was search Google for Hogback Bridge images. Most of them didn't show much of the interior. Or they showed other bridges, which at first got in the way but later led me to something that might be worth investigating. Eventually, I found a 2011 image that clearly showed the inner walls and roadbed. It was taken from the same end of the bridge as yours. (Two observations including some of the graffiti confirmed that.) It didn't show any bluish gray on the road or walls, but I was willing to accept that could've happened in the following four years.

Then, I saw another interior shot with a blue roadbed and brown walls. It turned out, though, to be in Vermont. Nevertheless, because it had a blue road so I visited the site from which it originated. The person who'd taken the shots seemed quite familiar with covered bridge construction, and he had quite a few photos illustrating various aspects of it. Interestingly, only one of them showed the bed being blue; it was brown in two others. That leads me to hypothesize that it's an atmospheric thing that occurs depending on the relative direction of the sun. I'm going to file that away and investigate the next time I'm near a covered bridge or something similar.

[Diane Miller]

Very cool! I'm running around central IL with friends doing bridges and trees. No time to look of comment further just now, but I'll toss out one from today. I'll catch up when I'm home.

[gary ellwein]

Dennis, on closer inspection of other images' I believe most of the grey is paint. It appears the keepers of the bridge tried to cover graffiti and expressions of eternal love. The gradation from top to bottom raises another issue. Are people who write on walls short? I've included an image to support my hypothesis. Excuse the poor quality of the image which was shoot hand held in the dark.

[Dennis Bishop]

It does look like paint to cover graffiti. Surprising that there'd be graffiti on the roadbed, though.

This spurred me on to search some more. One of the things I found was a Federal Highway Administration report on covered bridge work. It included the Hogback Bridge but nothing about this. They did talk about application of a clear sealer that's supposed to foil graffiti on a covered bridge in Kentucky.

Here's a bit more about Hogback Bridge that I came upon. It's by an artist who did a painting of the bridge. "The Hogback Bridge crosses the North River five miles northwest of Winterset. It was built in 1884 by H. B. (Benton) Jones. The builder’s home still stands in the small community of Truro, Iowa, 22 miles southeast of Winterset. Hogback is 106 feet long using Town Lattice truss with a flat roof.

Most of the covered bridges in Madison County were named for landowners nearby. However, there are no records of any Hogback family names in Winterset’s genealogy records. It may have acquired its name because of the wooded hills surrounding the bridge. The slightly convex curve of the hills resembles the curve of a hog’s back. The bridge was renovated in 1992 and cost $118,810.

Farmers living nearby maintained the covered bridges to defray their Poll Tax. This was a tax placed on every citizen that must be paid before the citizen was allowed to vote. Any able-bodied man who could not afford the Poll Tax could grade the roads and shingle and paint the bridges to pay off his debt."

This bridge has taken us on quite a detour. It's nice that our education on this site isn't limited to photography and digital processing.

[gary ellwein]

Dennis, some of the information you found is covered in a pamphlet "Covered Bridges of Madison County Iowa, A Guide" written by Andrew R. Howard @ 19998. The light grey of the sidewalls is paint covering graffiti. The dark grey of the road bed appears to be a thick sealant. The current modern bridge is a couple hundred yards down stream. If one walked through the portal in the photo and looked up, Hogback Ridge would form the sky line. This has been an enjoyable detour.

Another line of inquiry came to mind. Are people who write on walls short.

[Hazel Grant]

What a learning journey this has been ! Thanks for all. Hmmmm---only short people deface walls? I'll have to think on that one Maybe the tall people just crawl around so that they won't be seen in their evil endeavors.:tinysmile_shy_t: