This photograph was taken at the beginning of May 2018 near the village of St-Barthelemy, Quebec, Canada. I was scouting for interesting landscapes in this agricultural region. Melting snow and excessive rainfall had flooded many of the fields over the previous few days.

I spotted this lone flooded tree in the centre of a pool of water, so I parked the car on the side of the road and set up my tripod.

The main question for my composition was which focal length to use. For this type of scouting, I carry all my lenses in my car, which cover a range from 16mm to 840 mm (35mm eq). Here, I chose a 68 mm focal length to frame the scene. To balance the composition, I put the tree on the left third of the frame, leaving the right two-thirds empty.

I used a 10-stop ND filter to smooth any wind ripples on the water surface and exposed it for 137 seconds. The long exposure had the desired effect on cloud texture and direction. Once again, I was guided by the live time feature on my Olympus camera, which allows me to see the histogram progress during long exposures.

That day, under the same conditions, I captured an amazing image of a flooded barn, which I published in my portfolio.

Springtime in Quebec and its varied weather conditions offer great photo opportunities.