Hi all,
When reading the title of this post, just imagine the average man singing the word Blossom with his best pseudo-operatic voice, and that’s what I was hoping you would hear when reading it. So, that being said, the theme of this post is pretty straight forward.
Pretty, pretty flowers! Now, I have to admit, I always just call these guys cherry blossoms, though I’m fairly certain they aren’t, but I love the Japanese aesthetic of the cherry blossom. Plus, these flowers are five-petaled and coloured just like cherry blossoms, and fall of the branch in that same epically beautiful way, so why break the streak. Here are my cherry blossom shots from last weekend.
This is my second year shooting these beauties in Ottawa, and let me tell ya, the results never disappoint. I went shooting in the middle of the day, which means harsh light. That’s generally bad, but it’s worked for me in the past as you get some lovely backlit flowers, some in shade, and some cool lens flares sometimes. The key to these shots I found is getting a range of photos from up close on just a few flowers to an entire tree. When shooting the whole tree, I try and look for interesting branch structure to anchor the shot.
I find shooting flowers is actually a great way to work on your composition. You tend to start out thinking, ‘Well, the flowers are super beautiful, so how can I screw this up?’ And then you look at your results, and you realize that picking out patterns or finding that one flower to focus on amidst all the others in the frame makes for a much better picture.
With this photo, I thought the white blossoms in front of the church were pretty angelic, so there was a bit of a story there, or at least a theme. Also, I placed the branches in the top right of the shot so that they could point to that one bit of the church in the background.
I’ve got to admit, though, shooting flowers can get old after a while. I mean, they look really great, but sometimes you want something a little more unique. And then, sometimes you get that opportunity.
I really loved this shot, and how the sky was completely blown out and how bright the pinks, greens and oranges were. I didn’t think this shot would amount to anything when I took it, but on further review, I really liked it, and decided to go a little crazier with editing. I ended up with this kind of pop-art styled photo, which I really like.
Even in the middle of the day, you can play with brightness and shadow, as the tree’s canopy tends to block out the harshest rays. With this shot, I envisioned the two bundles of flowers talking to each other from across the darker background.
With this shot, I was trying to get a little bit more out of my bokeh (referring to the mushy blurry bits). I had been told in a youtube video about showing the transition from in focus to out of focus with my shots to improve my use of bokeh, so here I chose a bundle of blossoms on a branch that you can see get blurrier and blurrier.
With this shot, I was trying to take advantage of my wide angle lens, so I get a lot of the twisty bough in there, and I decided to crop the photo into a kind of bookmark with that one bundle of flowers at the centre of the bough as my focus.
A great shot to try is something like this. You look for a flower that is backlight by really bright light, and you focus on it, with the sun whiting out part of the background. Et voila.
Those are my pretty flower shots. I hope you’ve had enough of pink, because I think my retinas are burning ever so slightly.
I hope you enjoyed what you saw, and come back again in the next week or so when I have a new set of photos to show you! Thanks for looking.
Loved the subject matter, your shots and your commentary – as usual! Don’t you just love this time of the year? So many possibilities…