Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Cherry Blossoms 2015 Part 1| Nature Photographer

I absolutely love photographing the cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin in Washington DC. This year, peak dates were delayed due to the cold weather, so I was able to get there during that time (first weekend in April) to take some sunrise photos. I went again with my good friend Kathy; she and I had gone two years ago and photographed the trees at sunset, so we thought we'd mix it up this year and hit sunrise instead. This meant bundling up against the cold, finding a parking spot not too far from the Tidal Basin (which was easier than we thought it would be), and finding just the right spot to get started.


As UVA alumni, we were more than happy to shoot from near the Jefferson Memorial, which was particularly lovely surrounded by cherry blossoms.




One of my favorite things to do is to use the cherry blossom trees to frame the monuments


We slowly made our way around the Tidal Basin, taking shots of the monuments and trees from many locations. Here are a couple of my favorites.


As the sun rose higher, the light started to be less than ideal; I'm not very happy with a lot of the later shots that I took, as even with a polarizing filter on my lens, the light was just a little too harsh, even if the scenery was beautiful.
 However, I found that shots like this worked VERY well in the light that I had.
 And even my last two of the day weren't half bad, despite my preference for the softer pre-sunrise light.

This was a lovely way to spend a Saturday morning in DC with a very good friend. It's such a beautiful time of year in the city, if an incredibly crowded one! There were so many photographers there doing photo shoots, particularly of couples...I have to say, for once I was very happy that I was not photographing people, and could just focus on the beautiful scenery!

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