Field Of Dreams

Whilst driving along with my family we spotted this field right next to the road full of those wonderful round bales of hay scattered about.

After pulling over I had to wait about 15 minutes for the rain to ease off before I ventured outside with my camera gear, then made a run for it.

I set up my Nikon D300s onto my Manfrotto tripod then took advantage of the cloudy sky by using my Lee 0.9 hard nd grad filter.

I composed the shot then zoomed in slightly to draw the other bales of hay closer.

I slipped in the 0.9 filter into the Lee holder and looked through the viewfinder until the dark line from the nd grad was along the top of the hill to really darken that sky.

I used aperture priority and chose f/16 for maximum dof.

I focused on the front hay bale with the auto focus then flipped the switch to manual to make sure the focusing didn't move.

I fired the shutter using my hahnel cable release which I had attached when setting up the camera and tripod.

Post Processing

I added contrast and darkened the blacks.

I added more warmth with the white balance then topped that off with a little boost in saturation.

I added unsharp mask to bring out the detail and clarity.