39.0

Taken in woodlands near me whilst out walking. At first I thought there was little scope for a picture as the dull, even light was so flat and uniteresting. In situations like these I try and do more than simply press the shutter and had the idea of creating art with some basic technique.

For this shot I set to maximum focal length and, as I wanted to get a low shutter speed, I raked up the aperture to f16. I could have reduced the ISO too but I was happy with this exposure setting.

I prefer to work in Manual mode as this gives me more control. I then pressed the shutter and moved the camera downwards with a short 'snap' action.

The result is an image which is soft and pastel-like with just enough motion blur to retain the essence of the young saplings whihout defining them too much.

In Photoshop I adjusted the colour balance to reduce excessive contrast and even-out the tones. I also dodged and burned in a couple of places, otherwise the image is pretty much as it was shot.