"A Tuscan wildflower meadow basking in the soft, early autumn glow of mid September. There was little here to build a composition around; no distant rolling hills, no sharp delineation between one field and the next, no dramatic cloud formation. My view was little more than a rather forlorn looking meadow, ignored by tourists in search of something eminently more 'Tuscan'.

I particularly enjoy the challenge of trying to find beauty where it doesn't obviously exist. What struck me here were the seed heads dancing in the wind - they had a rhythm all of their own. The grey skies dictated the colour palette and by controlling the exposure I was able to soften the arid brown of the parched grasses into a more gentle pastel hue. The difficulty was how to capture their balletic movement. Although the way I shoot is controllable to a certain degree, there remains a great deal of unpredictability about it. Easy enough to emphasise the soft pastel colours, but laying down a pleasing arrangement of swaying grasses was considerably more challenging. I tried to echo the movement of the grasses with the movement of my camera and as the image built up, layer by layer, I started to see their harmonious entanglement and gentle beauty appear before me."  Valda Bailey