A piece of decaying drift wood on the shores of the Juan de Fuca Strait. Canon XSi EF 50mm at f/1.4 1/4000 ISO 200 -1 ev

I was hiking along the Juan de Fuca strait with my daughter and we had camped for the night when I came upon this piece of driftwood. The texture of the wood as it had decayed in such a remarkable pattern was what interested me and I wanted a photograph that pulled your eye in to that. I chose my fast 50mm and opened it right up to f/1.4 to created a very small plane of focus. I got what I wanted but I knew that I would want to do more when I got the image back home. I opened it up in Nik Silver Efex Pro and converted it to black and white and applied a vignette to completely black out the distracting background. Not only does this force the eye to focus on the central subject but it also helps to set the mood of the photo.

-Russell Berg