B is for ... Broadditch Pond

DDW's February 2014 Alphabet Challenge - B
Bobsbitz59's Technique Challenge- Wild Card - Long Exposure

After coffee at one of our favourite garden centres, we took a short trip down the road to the farm shop. Opposite the shop is a pond, popular with ducks and swans. Today, not unsurprisingly given the recent weather, the pond was rather overfull, and the adjacent picnic area flooded. Leaving Mum lapping up the sun in the car listening to Classic FM, I wandered across the road for some with the camera.

The pond goes by the name of Broadditch Pond, so that was B sorted.

For the technique challenge I claim my Wild Card for this week by trying some long exposures. I fitted a polarising filter to the lens to enhance the clouds and a 10-stop filter to smooth out the ripples in the water - guessing at an exposure of around 40s. Back home I used Lightroom 5 to tweak the crop, exposure and contrast before dropping into Nik Color Efex to reduce the colour cast left by the 10-stop filter, and further tweaks to colour and detail, then back into LR5 for sharpening and export.