River Kent at Low Park Wood, Sedgwick

This is a view of the river Kent at Low Park Wood, Sedgwick, near Kendal in Cumbria.

The image was taken as a three-bracket HDR set at 3pm on the 3rd July 2022 and later developed with On1 Photo RAW.

Low Park Wood, at Sedgwick, near Kendal, is the location of the Kendal Caravan and Motorhome Club site and was formerly a gunpowder works until 1935. There are still remnants of the gunpowder works buildings around the site.

This site is a regular holiday destination for Gill and I and, over the past 25 years, I’ve been photographing the River Kent from various access points here but never been completely satisfied with the results.

I am, however, very pleased with this photo.

Single Exposure

Originally I developed the image from the single middle exposure, fearing that movement in the trees would be problematic with the HDR blend. The dynamic range of the scene and exposure used meant the sky would be blown, but I’d planned on using On1’s sky replacement as a pragmatic solution for that.

After plenty of time spent developing it, I was quite pleased with the results but curious how the three-bracket HDR blend would look. So, I merged the set and developed that too.

HDR Blend

There didn’t appear to be any alignment or movement issues with the exposure blend, and the extra dynamic range yielded better gradation between tones and colours. I was also able to recover more detail of the leaves in the brightest sunlight.

After trying for over two decades to capture a worthy image of the River Kent here at Low Park Wood, I feel I have eventually succeeded.

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