Weekly commented photo #9 - The dead tree and the clouds

The dead tree and the clouds

It was a long week without blogging. I spent days and days driving in regions between the Alps where we live and Provence. The few time i had at home was for some office work. The weather was not really nice anywhere but i could at least make some garden images for one client but could'nt find some time to make photos for myself.

I arrived at home this night after a 1000 km long drive and spent an important part of the morning to solve a routing problem between my linux boxes.
After that i started to think about the image i could show and comment here today.

There were 2 or 3 nice ones in my most recent archives but i keep them for the days to come. Diving a little deeper in the old files, i found this one from november.
This field is just under my house and i often consider it as my own garden. It's a nice place very well exposed and i think i will be a perfect one for some spring naps.

In the last week of november i was making some work on our new but old house. The weather was sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny and the wind really fresh, announcing the huge snow falls we had the weeks after.
In the end of afternoon, the light was more and more nice and i was more and more tired of carrying stones and concrete ...
I washed my hands, changed my clothes, took my usual photo gear and went to that field.
OK, the light was nice but what to do in this empty field with electric lines and houses in the background.
After a few minutes of intense thinking i decided that the light and wind would be perfect for a long exposure game with the clouds.
I found this old dead tree to have a nice silhouette and composed the image around him. Beeing without leaves was a good point for the long exposure.

Here comes the technical words, if you're not interested you can skip :)
The image was done with wide angle zoom (Sigma 10-20) at about 12 mm.
I used 2 filters :

• A 0.9 soft GND to balance sky and ground.
• A Hoya ND 400 for the long exposure in day light (a little more than 90 seconds).

Last words : The tree is now really dead, he was torn by the wind last week.

Post last words : This post is also a contribution to the Skywatch Friday meme.