Footbridge and Fog

This footbridge is located on the path along the western bank of the River Kent between Low Park Wood and Hawes Wood, near Kendal in the Lake District.

The photo was captured as a single-exposure RAW file at 2:45pm on Friday the 3rd May 2024 and developed with On1 Photo RAW.

First Holiday of the Year – It All Went Wrong

This was one of the many subjects I photographed on my only proper photo walk of our first holiday of 2024.

Gill was feeling tired after all that was involved with fixing the caravan shower 🚿 on Thursday, so she was resting while I did my first photography in over seven months.

Furthermore, on Saturday, Gill began to feel unwell 🤒. By Sunday, she was feeling worse and spent the whole day in bed.

It rained ⛈️.

And on Monday, we went home.

Software Problem and On1 Support

Despite the above, I did get a few photos of potential, and one was of the river’s weir near the footbridge. I started developing this photo, but I then had a problem with my software – On1 Photo RAW.

There was a weird display issue in the form of a pink overlay/ mask. I applied all the usual remedies that support had given me in the past, but nothing would rectify the problem.

So I contacted On1.

Waiting …

Having submitted the support request by email and sent a couple of follow-up reminders, we returned home from the disastrous holiday. Over a week had gone by, and I still hadn’t heard back from On1 support.

Losing it

I started to lose my recently-regained enthusiasm for photography.

In desperation, I submitted a request via a form at the On1 website. This time, I got replies. Eventually the verdict was that there was some sort of problem with the file, and not the software.

Let Down

On1’s support really let me down. I’d lost over a week of eager post-processing. Support had previously been excellent!

I eventually copied the file to a new subfolder and redeveloped it without problems. But by now, I’d lost interest in the photo – at least for the time being.

After a period of evaluating other software options, I eventually conceded that On1 was still the best software for me, despite the recent support problem.

Footbridge

Trying to put the whole issue behind me, I looked through the other images I’d taken on my one day’s photography, and thought the footbridge might be worth a go. It is suitably different from the troublesome weir shot if nothing else.

On this holiday, I had been mindful to investigate using higher ISO in order to achieve faster shutter speeds.

Image stabilisation has enabled us to use lower hand-held shutter speeds by mitigating camera movement, but it doesn’t do the same for a landscape’s foliage. And with improvements in noise reduction over the past few years, there was no longer a reason to be hesitant over bumping up the ISO a bit.

So this image was shot at ISO400 and f/8 which yielded 1/60 s in the available light at the wide end of my Sony 10-18mm, which should be more than fast enough to freeze any foliage movement.

The Final Image …

Together with trying to reestablish my enthusiasm and drive for photography after a long, hard winter; and after the trauma of the software problem and everything else on this holiday; perhaps I am just reassuring myself with this etherial, dreamy presentation of the footbridge?

On balance though, I think I quite like it.

Comments welcome below: