As most of you probably know, I spent last week in Austin (TX), and I had a great time. I managed to go out shooting a couple of times (despite the Arctic weather) and both my workshops went really well: I had a great bunch of students for both of them, and Dave Wilson did a great job of organising them. All being well we'll organise another workshop out there in the future.

Anyway, I'm now back in the UK for a week to run some one-to-one training and will be posting shots from my Austin trip while I'm here. I thought I'd start with this one though as no trip to Texas can possibly be complete without a shot of the state flag: taken in Johnson City.

If you take a look at the original you'll notice that the trees were quite a bit more defined in the original. In the final version I blurred them using Bokeh as I felt that they were just a bit too obvious. If the sky had been good – deep blue, fluffy clouds, and so on – this probably wouldn't have been necessary, but the shot just looked too stark and cluttered with a flat grey sky.

As always, let me know what you think.

captured camera lens focal length aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO flash image quality RAW converter image editor plugins (etc) cropped?

8.51am on 2/2/11 Canon 5D Mark II EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM 120mm f/5.6 1/320 aperture priority +1 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 Bokeh minor