Standing Out

Cherry Blossoms

Seattle’s cherry blossom season is incredible, because there are so many cherry trees beyond just the standard UW quad blossoms that everyone flocks to. I’ll start this post with the most instagram-artsy looking photo + edit I’ve ever done I think:

This is a closeup of a weeping cherry tree in front of our house! During the roughly 1-week when its blooming, it is unbelievably gorgeous. I caught the sunset at the perfect time for this one, hence the golden glow, and I got up close (but not quite personal) with the zoom lens so I could get that bokeh.

This next photo was from a park near our place, that has panoramic sunset views of the puget sound, olympic mountains, and ballard (one of these is not like the others). I was trying to capture the pinkish-white glow of the blossoms under the golden sunset. Its a spectacular sight in person, with the mountains, water, and flowers all coming together. Despite the noise of some of the power lines I am still pretty happy with how this one turned out. It was hard to frame a shot exactly the way I wanted to with the houses, trees, and vantage point.

Tulips

Later in April, we went to the annual tulip festival in skagit valley. We got lucky with some clear skies and great weather in the morning, and a beautiful vista of tulips (crazy for a tulip festival, I know). It felt like there were more tulips here than at the really famous festival in Holland. I took many pictures of the various fields and rows of flowers, and generally tried to keep the background interesting by catching the mountains/foothills of the cascades. In person, Mt Baker was actually pretty visible in the background as well, but it was hard to frame with the tulips in the foreground. I think an insane telephoto lens and some clever camera positioning would probably make this achievable.

Here is another cool picture of one of the blends of red/yellow tulips they had.

Overall, I was definitely happy with the tulip-ing and the cherry blossoms this year. It was fun to take some different types of nature pictures. I’m looking forward to trying more in the future.