The half-life of cherry blossoms

[slejhamer]

The cherries bloomed early this year, thanks to warm weather, but the recent rains and cooler temps have hastened the blooms' demise.

I shot this with a puffy white cloud as background for a high-key effect; +3 EC.



This was in a shady spot, with a warmer white balance setting, and a macro lens:




The petals were falling rapidly, like snow flurries at times, accumulating on the grass and the tree roots that were peeking through in some places.

[Wedding Shooter]

Nice series.

[NT73]

Well caught.
They seem to self destruct, a few days after blooming every year. Wind rain frost seems to catch them unawares. You would think nature would know better.

[Don Schaeffer]

Beautiful. I really like your contrast treatment. It makes the blooms look like heaven.

[Toad]

Very nice stuff. Great to see your photos again.

[EnglishBob]

We have a charry tree next to the drive in our new house, my car is wearing most of the blossoms... Great images

[shuttertalk]

Beautiful work Mitch - love the milky treatment.

#1 and #3 are perfect IMHO - the petals contrast really nicely with the wood grain.

With #2, I think the DOF is a bit narrow, although I know how tricky those macros can be.

[slejhamer]

Hey thanks for looking, folks!

Good point about the DOF in #2; I'd have preferred more also. I'm sure I had the camera on auto pilot and I was only playing with exposure comp (a la #1.) Plus it was breezy and I couldn't sacrifice speed for DOF, unfortunately.

The really good thing about #1 is that I learned my camera has +/- 3 stops of exposure comp! I didn't know that until I was fiddling with the dial.

[matthew]

These are fantastic – so far beyond anything I've taken.

The blossoms are about a month early here, and the trees near me are just on the verge of bloom. But after a week of warm weather, we've had a couple of cold days and a night that went below freezing. Many of the flowers are already looking tired and shrivelled. It's not looking like a good year for them yet again.

[Kombisaurus]

Very nice Slej.