Another “Buena Vista Panorama” attempt in Bennington County

So how does one celebrate Juneteenth on what is arguably the hottest day of the year?

Simple. I grabbed my Rolleiflex Automat MX camera, packed my camera bag with four rolls of Fuji Provia 100F, and drove to Bennington County, Vermont.

I’ve blogged about this before; Vermont has more wooden covered bridges than any other state in the Union; and Bennington County has five of them. I’ve photographed four of those bridges at various times and with various cameras. I’ve even entered a couple of those shots in competition, but none of those photos made any significant punch.

But you know me. I don’t give up so easily. This time, I planned on photographing the bridges by using my ultra-wide Buena Vista Panorama technique – where I photograph the bridges and their environs while rotating the camera’s field of view; then re-assemble the developed photos into an ultra-wide shot.

Now my previous attempts were okay … I mean, “okay” is about all I can ask at this point. I’m still dealing with unequal exposures, parallax overlays, and who knows what else.

But maybe … just maybe … if I set this up in the best way possible … I can get some sweet ultrawide shots for my efforts.

We shall see.

I started at Arlington Covered Bridge, just a few miles over the New York / Vermont border. Trust me … I got out of the car, and got smacked with the humidity like a dodgeball to my face. Get the camera set up, take the shots, and get back in the air-conditioned Chevrolet as fast as you can, brother.

And this was the best of the batch, a three-shot assemblage.

Wait a second. There’s no parallax fun-house twisting in the panorama. There’s no visible exposure seams in the panorama. Not this time.

You know what? Maybe – just maybe – I’ve dialed this in. This is a good thing, people. Trust me on this.

Okay. One result does not confirm a successful hypothesis. Let’s do another one.

Next stop was the Chiselville Covered Bridge. It took a while to find this bridge – not because of bad planning or confusing directions, mind you – trust me, any sort of cell phone coverage or GPS signal was non-existent in this part of Vermont. I honestly think I was in an area where modern communication involved two empty soup cans and a roll of stretched string.

But I found the bridge – found a safe place to park – and got the shots.

Again, I used the panoramic head. And this was the best of the batch – again, a three-shot panorama capture.

Holy crap, that’s crisp. You can even see the speed limit warning on the bridge roof.

What do you mean, you can’t see the speed limit warning on the bridge roof?

It’s right there, look closer.

Okay, time to load up and get to the next shooting spot. Mostly because the heat was unbearable, and mostly because I didn’t want to pay the extra dollar fine for taking that photo WHILE STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. Safety first, y’all.

All right. Now back to one of my usual targets, Paper Mill Covered Bridge. And since my foot is still not 100% post-surgery, I didn’t descend down to the shore for these shots. Instead, I captured the bridge along Murphy Road.

Unfortunately, the surface shots of Paper Mill Covered Bridge aren’t really great. One side has a picket fence to protect trespassers from entering private property; and the other side of the bridge was just blah. And again – still recovering from foot surgery – I’m not taking a chance to stumble down to the riverside.

I did, however, get a great shot of a passing cyclist who exited the bridge, so I’ll take that.

Yeah, THAT would be the kind of photo I would need to capture with a hired cyclist model. You know, someone with their own Ironman-capable cycling equipment … or even a couple of kids who have classic Schwinns with the banana seats, baseball cards in the wheel spokes, streamers on the handle, and a big pennant flag off the back frame.

All right, let’s find our final film target. A short sprint up from Paper Mill Covered Bridge is the Burt Henry Bridge. That one actually had a reasonable access to the riverbed, although I took extra care lest I wreck six months of post-surgery recovery, repair and rehab.

And look what I got for my efforts.

That photo just screams Vermont. It couldn’t be any more Vermont-ish if a bundled-up Bernie Sanders was eating a creemee and listening to Phish.

So I’ve definitely got something here. Definitely. And actually, I’ve got a better run than I’ve had with previous attempts. This buena vista panorama will work best with three color images and good quality film. Combining four or more images causes issues. And any leftover Russian Svema film that’s still growing ice crystals in my fridge can stay there, for all I care.

This is good information for me. Because this is July 1st.

And less than six months from now … this Buena Vista Panorama will be put to the ultimate test.

Trust me on this. 😀