photo blur, how?

[Julius]

I want to take a photo of some trees with the wind blowing on them. how do I get the soft effect of the action of the wind.

I have a canon 1000d witha standard 18 to 55 lens, lots of help please!

[carregwen]

Depends. It depends upon available light, the wind, camera settings and perhaps a filter. Choose a low-light time of day, set you camera on a tripod and set the camera to a small aperture (say, f16). That should give you a couple of seconds. If that doesn't work try a polarising filter with the above conditions as that will reduce light by at least two stops. If that doesn't work you might need an ND filter (not graduated unless it's also a sunset). ND filters are just neutral density filters that block some of the light without affecting the colour. They range from about 1 stop up to 10. You would need a holder as well to keep it in place.

[Julius]

thank you, does this mean a slow shutter speed to go with the f16?

[arith]

Several different ways spring to mind; one I found by accident doing bad HDR. A slow shutter speed is probably the easiest and I'm not sure how slow it should be, possibly 1/30 is slow enough in a stiff breeze.

Falling leaves can give the impression of movement, as can photoshop; a Gaussian blur multiply layer over two screen layers and the original, putting a duplicate with normal blending with adjusted opacity on top. All the layers are duplicates and it is called the Modified Orton Method.

Bit like this: