And now for something completely different…from me at least.
I spotted this carpet of bluebells on my way to work yesterday morning, so I stopped to take a few shots. Having got home I started to think about how I wanted to present this particular image, to me it just seemed a bit ordinary as a straight shot. I thought popped into my head about applying the Orton treatment, something I’ve not done in quite some time. For those unfamiliar it’s basically taking two versions of the same scene, one in focus and the other blurred, then sandwiching them together to create a more painterly look. Click on the highlighted word to go to a Photoshop tutorial. After a bit more fiddling around in Lightroom I ended up with what you see here.
The next two shots are the results of experimenting with moving and zooming the camera and lens during the exposure, it’s very hit and miss. To achieve this I basically needed to set the camera to give the longest shutter speed available given the bright condition. For this I set the ISO to 100 and the aperture to f11, the smallest on my Fujifilm X10 compact.
For the shot above I simply rotated the camera very quickly as I pressed the shutter.
For this shot I quickly zoomed the lens as I pressed the shutter. I took this (and the others) handheld and as a result the wobbly movement has created wavy patterns which to me look like an exploding firework.
Definitely something different to my usual style but fun to have a go at.
Thanks for stopping by.
Dave Wares 
Fantastic picture – beautiful colour and interesting composition that makes me want to walk that path into the dark forest.
Thank you.