Meltwater by Matthew Howarth

5 questions about this photo:

Q1. What equipment did you use?
This was one of my last shots on my Canon 300D, with my 24-105mm L lens. I had a 9 stop ND filter (Lightcraftworkshop ND500) on, and, unsurprisingly, a tripod and cable release. I was really tempted to get rid of the filter for a shot, but knew how I wanted it to look and took the risk to keep it on.

Q2. What settings did you have on your camera?
I metered for the water before putting the ND filter on, then, as the light suddenly changed, was guesstimating the exposures and checking on the LCD for feedback. It was taken from a footbridge, so as people walked over I had the opportunity for test shots at higher ISO. When I got a break I dropped the ISO back down to 100 and shot - I got only a handful of opportunities, so things were a little tense with the light only a brief moment.

This shot ended up being; 55 seconds ¦ ISO 100 ¦ f/11.0 ¦ 24mm, shot in RAW.

Q3. What software did you use during the post-production?
Lightroom 3 was used first to create three versions of the shot. I applied a lens correction in each case, as well as some noise reduction. The water and sky versions were practically identical, with a slight drop in clarity, slight desaturation and a boost to the brightness. The snow was very blue and underexposed, so that had a stop of exposure added and massive desaturation to the blue channel.

I dropped the three images into Photoshop 7.0 and manually blended them using a tablet. Curves and the hue/saturation sliders were used on the snow layer to try to blend it in naturally - not entirely successfully!

Q4. What is the location?
It's the footbridge near the entrance to the Rickmansworth Aquadrome, a local nature reserve in the UK - a ribbon of lakes sandwiched between a couple of rivers and a canal.

Q5. How did you come up with the idea of this shot?
It was at the end of a long day shooting only somewhat successfully in the heavy snow, and I was trudging back home. When I got to the bridge, the snow on the trees along the river was so striking that I thought I'd take an extra ten minutes to have a play with a recently acquired ND filter.

The initial shots were fine, but uninspiring, experiments with a grey winter sky. Suddenly the sky lit up to the East and swept round into frame. The main decision was whether to keep the filter on and take fewer shots, or to take it off and lose the blur to the river.

Extra Q: Please share an interesting or funny fact that happened while working on this photograph.
First off I had a kingfisher flying around to the right of the frame, daring me to abandon this one, but I figured I couldn't get a decent shot of it with the kit I had in the low light.

The main frustration was the passersby, all of whom slowed down, very kindly, to minimise shake to the camera, whilst I wish they'd just run across and given me more time with no one walking over.