Old Barn, Salisbury Plain

The vibrancy of oil seed rape makes it a favourite with landscape photographers in spring. This derelict barn on Salisbury Plain, located across a busy road from a copse of trees, makes an ideal focal point in a composition. Careful positioning shows the barn against the copse, whilst hiding the road. Standing close to the edge of the crop, I wanted foreground texture so I included flowers just 6m from my camera in the foreground. As the composition required a 155mm telephoto lens, it was impossible to get everything sharp in a single frame. I made 12 frames, adjusting the point of focus manually between each one to create a series of slices focused from 6m to infinity. I then focus-stacked them on my computer to get front-to-back sharpness. To me, the finished picture has the feel of a scene from the prairies of the American mid-West.