Yoshino Cherry trees encircle the tidal basin at Washington D.C.
This week, I was thinking that the trees may bloom very early this year, particularly as a friend in N.Carolina reported that dafodils bloomed early, in mid-February.
Today, looking on-line at cherryblossomwatch.com
I see that the D.C. air temp through January and February this year has been warmer than the past six years.
As spring arrived particularly early in 2012, the Yoshino Cherry trees around the tidal basin bloomed early and disappeared BEFORE the opening of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Thankfully, I achieved a bit of photography the day before a spring storm blew away all the Yoshino flowers.
Historic first cherry bloom in D.C.
•2016: March 25
•2015: April 10
•2014: April 10
•2013: April 9
•2012: March 20
•2011: March 29
•2010: March 31
•2009: April 1
The grey season. In the northeast, wintertime without snow is a drag, particularly for outdoor photographers. I need some snow here. Not just on the ground – we need snow sticking to tree branches.
This winter has brought a fair amount of precipitation, but it’s been rain rather than snow. What little snow we’ve seen has quickly washed away as snow turned into rain. So here are a few shots from last winter.
Old grist mill, in winter
The first is an old grist mill. It is pretty – I hope that much is obvious. However, the light may not be obvious. The orientation of the mill and surrounding trees doesn’t catch much direct sunlight. The sun is setting on the other side of those trees. The light is what it is and there’s no changing it.
In photography, we have to be aware of the orientation of the subject with regard to the light. When the light on the subject is not what we would prefer, you can sometimes move the subject, but not if the subject is a building. You can sometimes move the light, but not if the light happens to be the sun. You might come back at a different time of day, when the sun is in a different position. However, I believe this mill is in shadow of the trees both morning and evening.
Church at sunset
Sometimes, in outdoor photography, using only available light, there’s nothing you can do to change the light on the subject. But you might find a different subject to photograph. Across the street, a church was catching the light of the setting sun. So, I photographed the church. And next to the church is a historic one-room schoolhouse. Nice light, eh?
(To see a larger view, click on any image. )
One-room schoolhouse
I included this last image (schoolhouse) in a recent 2015 wall calendar.
Bicyclist making a photograph at Glacier National Park
The National Forest Service wants to charge you a large fee to make photographs on national lands (national forests or national parks). The proposal covers “still photography and commercial filming” … without any further clarification, that seems to include you making a photo with your camera phone.
The proposal, an iterative evolution of past interim proposals because past efforts have been unclear.
Do check it out ASAP. The Forest Service is accepting public comments until November 3rd. You can easily provide your input on-line at the link above. I did.
May is the month for flowering trees! You’ve probably seen a few lately. Some of my friends don’t seem interested in specifically what type of tree they are looking at … but I certainly am interested.
How about the photo here at the top – do you know this one? Magenta flowers with green leaves. Flowering crabapple.
How about the next one? Pink & magenta flowers, clustered close along the branches, and the leaves aren’t particularly showing yet. Eastern Redbud.
Pink / magenta flowers, closely following the branches.
(Click on either image for a larger view.)
As for trees with magenta flowers, there are only two others that are common. Magnolia flowers can range from mostly magenta, with a bit of white, to mostly white with a bit of magenta. (The latter is more common.) Uniquely, magnolia flowers are larger than any of our other common flowering trees.
The last one is tricky. The flower buds, before blooming, can be magenta color. The flowers in bloom look like bright pink carnations. That’s a Kwanzan Cherry; there is nothing else like it.
Although I have mentioned my book project regarding local wildflowers, apparently I neglected to annouce that it was done.
It is available from Blurb, here: Wildflowers of RiverPark.
For more information, go to the navigation panel for this blog and click on “Book”. That will show you all my blog posts about books.
There are a couple of minor errors in the book. Specifically, my notes regarding the Eastern Redbud tree state that this tree does not produce legume seed pods. Actually, it does.
Interest in RiverPark is extremely local, people who work at this buisiness park. However, during one of my evening photo sessions at the park, I did encounter a couple people who walk around the park, but do not work there.
For all the people who are employed at RiverPark
who get out and walk around the park. (You know who you are.)
Flowers are listed first according to color. Each section of the book has the color marked at the top right corner. (White isn’t clearly marked because the page background is typically white.) If you want to look up a particular flower, you can quickly locate the appropriate color-coded section.
Within any section, pertaining to a color, plants are listed more or less alphabetically by the common name (rather than the scientific name). However, the alphabetic rule is not strictly applied. Two different species having a similar appearance may be shown on the same page.
Total disclosure: If anybody buys a copy of this book, $20 goes to Blurb (the printer) and $5 goes to me. The printing fee charged by Blurb is not negotiable (though they do sometimes offer discount coupons). I tacked on just $5 for myself because I could not imagine anyone paying more than $25 for a small book that is just 7 inches square and 80 pages. . . . Checking Blurb just now, it seems their prices have increased by $3, meaning the book is now $27.95.
Purple Trillium, Painted Trillium, and Trout Lilly are just a few of the wildflowers in bloom in the White Mountains of NH this weekend.
Purple Trillium is tricky to photograph because it has a nodding presentation (the flower faces downward). In the first photo here, I propped up the one flower with a stick (just a couple inches) so that it was not nodding. I love the soft background in this image; there is a strong sense of location yet without sharp details. (f\10 @ 1/50 sec)
In the second image (with the sun shining through it), the flower was on a slight rise and I shot up at it as I lay flat out on forest floor. Sometimes you have to get dirty.
(f\7 @ 1/250 sec)
In both cases here I used a reflector to kick a bit of light up into the face of the flower. This helps the first image simply because the flower is much darker than the background. In general, this is not true in the second image, but it does help specific areas that are dark (for example the center of the flower).
In Tennesee, anybody can enjoy Great Smoky Mountain National Park at no cost. There are no entrance fees and no parking fees. Apparrently this was part of the deal when the land was acquired (from native American Indians). And you can simply drive to the top of Clingman’s Dome.
Any evening on Clingman’s Dome, there can be a bevy of photographers lined up to photograph sunset. (Probably sunrise too, but I have not witnessed that.)
But as most photographers point their cameras toward the sun, they may miss out on some of the best scenes … which do not directly include the sun.
This image was shot with a micro-four-thirds camera (Panasonic Lumix G3) and captured as RAW. While JPEG images have already been processed (by the camera), RAW images receive no processing. In my experience, RAW images tend to look flat and require some post-processing (by me). While this scene appeared well to my human eyes, the camera capture was very low contrast. So the significant post-processing was to increase the contrast.
At a campground inside the Smokey Mountain National Park, there is no wi-fi or internet of any sort, no cell-phone service, and no 120v electric to plug-in anything. So, at some point, I had to leave the park in order charge batteries, check email … and clean up with a warm shower. (Actually, I did find one valid 120v electric socket hidden near the vending machines.)
A couple photos attached here from this morning. As shown here, this is how the Smokies got the name.
Each morning, the weather is unpredictable. Rain during the night usually means clouds in the morning, but these can clear out rapidly. This morning, the clouds did not clear out; but where the light is not putting on a show, the clouds sometimes do put on a show of their own.
A photographer has to travel. Staying in hotels can be expensive. So here is my alternative, a camper.
Famously, outdoor photographer John Shaw has said that a nature photographer’s idea of a six course meal is five granola bars and an apple. That’s because a nature photographer has to be out in the field when most people are back at the lodge eating breakfast or eating dinner. But this pace cannot be maintained every day. Today I was post-processing images from yesterday and doing laundry. So I had the luxury of cooking dinner.
2012 is the 100th anniversary of a gift. The Mayor of Tokyo Japan gave 3000 cherry trees to the people of Washingington DC. That’s a lot of trees. And as they bloom (all at the same time), that’s a riot of pink color that draws a pretty big crowd. But this year, if you did not come to this party early, you missed most of the show.
Normally, the magnificent flowers of these cherry trees begin to bloom around March 24 and peak during first week of April. This year, the warm weather in March caused the trees to bloom far earlier. And the show was over on March 25.
The first photo here is from March 23. The second was shot this morning, March 27. You can see what happened due to rain and wind over the weekend.
The crowd of people on Friday was crazy. Almost like the Esplanade in Boston on the Fourth of July (almost).
Not all is lost. These cherry trees here are the famoush Yoshino cherry trees. But there are a few other species that are still blooming nicely, for example the Kwanzan cherry trees are stunning (though there are not nearly as many). The area around the Jefferson Memorial is quite nice. And D.C. is looking quite green these days as deciduous trees are beginning to leaf out.
