A friend recently asked me if I had ever visited the West Montrose Covered Bridge. After learning that I had never seen the structure, plans were made to correct that situation.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

There is a plaque on-site that explains a bit about the history of the bridge.

The bridge crosses the Grand River. There is some park land adjacent to the bridge, making the area a great spot for family picnics.

There aren’t that many covered bridges left in the province of Ontario and traversing the Grand River on the West Montrose bridge brings back thoughts of days gone by.

The internal trusses and structure of the bridge caught my eye as I loved the repeating patterns and workmanship.

I captured all of the images in this article with a Nikon 1 J5 and the 1 Nikon 10-100mm f/4.-5.6 zoom lens. I found the combination worked very well and was easy to handle.

To capture the above image I tilted the flip screen on my J5 into the ‘selfie’ position and pointed the camera straight up at the inside roof structure of the bridge. I then carefully adjusted the composition of the image to centre the main truss beams to create this herringbone effect. This image was not cropped at all which helps to demonstrate the composure control that can be attained with the J5 when shooting in appropriate light, i.e. shade.

As cars and other vehicles approach you can hear an echo coming from the tube-like structure of the bridge.

One needs to be careful when walking across the bridge as sometimes rather large ‘presents’ are left by horse-drawn carriages.

This area of the province has Mennonite folks who practice a more simple lifestyle, including the use of horse-drawn carriages.

If you are lucky you may be able to capture a horse-drawn carriage making the trek across the bridge.

This portion of the Grand River is fairly shallow and there is a good assortment of various wild flowers and other foliage.

As well as photographing the West Montrose Covered Bridge there are some landscape image opportunities adjacent to the structure.

Technical Note:
All photographs in this article were captured hand-held using a Nikon 1 J5 with a 1 Nikon 10-100 mm f/4-5.6 zoom lens. The images were produced from RAW files using my standard process of OpticsPro 10 Elite, CS6 and Nik Suite.

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Article and all images are Copyright 2016 Thomas Stirr. All rights reserved. No use, duplication or adaptation of any kind is allowed without written consent. If you see this article reproduced anywhere else it is an unauthorized and illegal use.