+“We lose a great deal when we lose the sense and feeling for the sun. When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on nature’s sustaining and poetic spirit.”_

(Henry Beston)

Canada Geese and mallards enjoying the flood waters in the golden hour sunshine – at the Queen’s Meadow at Dartington, near Totnes, in south Devon, UK.

The watermeadow was connected to the tidal section of the River Dart before the introduction of Totnes Weir. The now silted drainage channels in existence today show the positions of the channels which in the past flooded at each high tide. Barges would moor in the channels and the tide would almost reach the foot of the Queen’s Arms Inn (the building in the far distance)

Pentax K- x
Pentax 18-55mm SMC / DAL lens
Hoya circular polarizer
POD bean bag
Cromatek 3 stop ND Graduated filter

3-section panorama

Aperture = f/8
Exposure duration = 1/10second

Focal length = 18mm
ISO = 200

Hand held

Each of the 3 sections used a hand-held 3 stop ND grad and were further processed as ‘Pseudo HDRs’ [each from 3 split-RAW processed 16-bit TIFF files (-2, 0, +2ev equivalents)] using Photomatix Pro 3.26

The 3 sections were then stitched to make a rotational panorama with Microsoft Research’s ‘Image Composite Editor’

Further processing using Photoshop & Lightroom