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FollowThis is a picture I took early Spring 2015. The beautiful cherry blossom braved out the early Spring chill and sent the message of Spring to the earth....
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This is a picture I took early Spring 2015. The beautiful cherry blossom braved out the early Spring chill and sent the message of Spring to the earth.
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Behind The Lens
Location
I took this picture in the parking lot of a local shopping plaza.Time
It was a chilly breezy early Spring morning. The wind made it hard to capture the details of these delicate little flowers and I also wanted to show the gentle swaying caused by the breeze to bring in more energy to the picture. So I decided to focus on one cluster of flowers on a bigger branch near the trunk and let the others swaying around it. During the post processing, I also blurred out some selected areas to make the flowers in focus more pop out. The motion blur of the flowers around it made the whole picture more vivid.Lighting
I took this picture in natural light, I like to use the natural light, especially in my nature and landscape photographs, because I like the beauty of the nature as it is. But in this case, it is a little bit challenging, because it was a partly cloudy day, the soft morning sun light is not always there to illuminate the little cluster of flowers I wanted to focus on, which was hiding behind other branches. I had to wait patiently for the right lighting and wind condition to make the shot. I took several shots, this was exactly the one I wanted.Equipment
I used a Panasonic Lumix FZ200 camera.Inspiration
It had been a long winter in New England this year, I was so happy to see these dainty pink flowers showing off the steps of Spring.Editing
I enhanced the color in Nick collection, color efex pro 4 and made a blur layer in adobe photoshop cs6. Noise reduction and sharpening were done in photoshop cs6 as well.In my camera bag
In this bag, I have my Lumix FZ200 camera, a ultra wide lens, a lens hood. I always have this bag in the car wherever I go because this camera is light and compact with a 28mm-600mm F/2.8 Leica lens. It can handle most of my photography needs under normal lighting condition. If I want to shoot during the blue hours or golden hours, or I want to shoot at night or in low light condition, I will use my Canon 5D Mark iii.Feedback
My first advice is observing and thinking before you start to shoot. Observe the weather, the lighting condition and the object its self, think about what touches you the most, what you want to show in your picture and compose in your mind. My second advice is being patient. The nature behaves its own way, we can not control it. What we can do is waiting patiently for the perfect lighting and other condition to make the perfect shot. My last advice is looking around and taking several shots before and after you get your perfect one. There might be surprises among them, you'll never know.