TimeLine Media Blog

Washington, DC

It just happened, but I am already missing the cherry blossoms this year. The photos from this year’s blooms were really satisfying. The weather, and the amount of time that I had to take advantage of their peak really came together nicely. Morning, afternoon, and evening, were all available to me this time. Moreover, I did not have to rush around as in other years. There were so many photographers around the Tidal Basin this year, with all kinds of gear! There were so many that were trying different angles, and strategies to get the perfect photo. I joined them with my own attempts. Of course, not everything will work when you first try, and this was probably my biggest disappointment.

From this spot, most images are of the blossoms in the foreground with either the Washington Monument in the background towards the left, or the Jefferson Memorial towards the right. In between these two familiar sites is a clear view of the Capitol Building that is much further away. Because of the distance, it is much smaller than the other two memorials in the frame. Consequently it is not as popular a subject from here.

But I wanted to try going for it since it seemed really easy to see this morning. I used the longest lens I had in the bag, a 105mm focal length. This was giving me what I wanted as anything much longer would have made the building larger, but the blossoms would have been harder to distinguish. In the first frame above without any added light, the blossoms were really in shadow, and look like really ugly clouds or debris in front of the lens.

Sunrise Blossoms

My next thought was that I should add some light from a speedlight to illuminate the blossoms, and show off more of their color. I held the flash off of the camera with a sync cord so that the light would not be positioned directly in front of the blooms. Here is the result:

It was as expected, but not that great to my eye. I tried a few more frames changing the flash power, the angle of the flash, but it did not change much. Perhaps I could have tried “painting” on the light with a small flashlight or had a softer modifier for the speedlights, but I did not have any more time as the sun started to rise quickly out of the horizon really changing the look of the overall scene. Turns out – THAT was what I needed to make a better frame.

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