Can’t hold a good bloom back

Despite Seattle’s best wishes, warmer weather was bound to happen, and it has.
With the cold winter and delayed warmer weather, it was pushed off for a while. But when the warmer weather came, even for a weekend, the flowers and leaves take the opportunity to pop. And pop they do.

In the Koi Garden, we have two Maples, a nice smaller lace leaf, and a beautiful coral bark maple. A few weeks ago, both had leaves were just a bunch of small buds, but now they are open and beautiful.

There is also a weeping cherry on the south side of the Koi Garden that has popped. Photographing Cherries are a game of chance in Seattle. Because the entire branches of the Cherries don’t bloom at the same time, one strong rain can knock the flowers off the branches. I took these flowers a few hours before the next downpour occurred.

For these photos, I have moved the F Stop as far down as possible, and kept the background far away. This leads to the out of focus feel and nice bokeh of the background. The depth of field is really only a few millimeters with these photos. I have also switched the auto focus off to allow me to focus on the exact part of the leaf that I want to.

Expect to spend some trial shots as any breeze will move these enough to loose the focus.
With digital cameras, this is no issue, and, in fact should be part of your technique. Just take a lot more photos and expect to spend more time culling out focus and unacceptable photos.