Ephemera

I last photographed Richmond Bridge a little under a year ago. At the time, there was one red boat moored beside the bridge. When I returned late this summer, there were more than a dozen boats lining the river, and I immediately knew I wanted to reshoot the location.

 

I've always been drawn to the architecture of this stunning 18th-century bridge, from the texture of its Portland stone to the romanticism of its Victorian gas-lit lampposts, but also to the almost ethereal spectacle when its unique shape and structure is reflected in the river. I was fortunate enough to be shooting the bridge on a morning when the wind speed had dropped to 1mph, which helped me get a clear reflection in the water and capture a sharp image of the boats relatively easily, despite the fact that the boats were moored quite loosely and slowly swaying along the width of the river.

 

Minimal editing was required before I was happy with the final image. I isolated the boats in Photoshop with the pen tool so that I could mask in a brighter exposure and selectively add some saturation and contrast, and then just spent a little time dodging and burning the bridge to recover some of the shadows and to emphasise the glow from the lamplight cast along the bridge's stonework.

 

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Done