Southampton Common

This is taken in a public park in Southampton, Hampshire, UK. I was supposed to be at work but luckily I have the blessing (every photographers dream) of absolute flexitime.

I used a 10 stop filter to slow this brightly lit scene down to a 64sec exposure. I should explain my reason for using such a filter in this case. Anyone who shoots long exposures will already understand! I wanted to remove the ripples on the pond and eliminate any of the birds on the water. There was a whole flock of gulls and various other waterbirds on the pond which have all but disappeared due to their continuous movement not being picked up by the sensor.
I also used a 3 stop Lee soft ND graduated filter to hold back the exposure on the sky and trees.

As for processing, very little. Apart from the RAW conversion in which I rescued a few wayward highlights and saturated the image I only used processing to remove any dust spots.

During resizing I attempted to use a sharpening technique divulged by Alex [link] I am not sure I have got it right but I like to try new methods so I gave it a go. Thanks Alex.