Taken at Dunstanburgh Castle, on the Northumberland Coast, near the village of Craster.

When I set out to take this shot, I had originally intended to capture the castle in the full glow of the Winter Sunset, which at this time in late February, strikes the castle from left to right, giving a wonderful glow to the towers and walls.

As usual, however, I was late, and only managed to grab a few shots from much further away, before the sun dipped below the horizon. I decided to make the most of it however, when I spotted the dramatic cloud formation, and set up my tripod to allow a long exposure, blurring the water.

I wanted to see what this photo would look like with a Gaussian blur applied to it. Hope you like the results. All editing was done with Photoshop Elements 2.



1. Duplicated the Background layer.

2. Added a Levels layer on top of that.

3. Adjusted the Levels layer to make it very light (slid the knob to the left).

4. Switched to the duplicate Background layer and applied a Gaussian blur of 6 to it. Set the Blending Mode to Multiply.