I took some photos of some spring trees in the local park with my Leica M9 the other day. After reviewing the photos that evening I spotted some ideas in one of the photos that would require a closer look than my Leica was capable of. So I headed out the next day with my Fuji gear in hopes of capturing my “vision”. Of course, my vision was never realized as the whole scene was different from the previous day. The overnight weather took it’s toll and changed the look of what I was wanting to capture, the groundskeepers were mowing grass, and there were too many people in the area. So I scrapped all of that plan.
So I drove through the park loop and thought of waiting until at least the people left the area. As I drove down a road I noticed some dogwood trees with white blossoms down in a ravine. There were no people around that area, so I parked my car and thought I would have a look. At least it would give me something to do, I figured, until I could check on my planned area later.
There were three or four trees with blossoms and it was only a matter of which one gave me the best access to shoot the blossoms. Since I probably have a gazillion blossom photos from over the years, I wanted to try some different viewpoints for a change. Since the trees were slightly down a slope from where I stood I was able to get very close to the branches and didn’t have to rely on a telephoto lens. In fact, since I could get really close to the blossoms, I was able to shoot with my 14mm wide-angle to get some exaggerated perspectives. I could take advantage of that lens close focusing abilities to emphasis one blossom or shoot up from under the branches. I also eventually took some shots with my 55-200 to round out the day.
When I loaded the images into Lightroom, I thought they all looked pretty good. I could have done some basic processing on them, as I normally do, and call it a day. However, as I was playing around with one image, I experimented with some black and white processing and tried a sort of faux infrared look. I thought it looked pretty neat and decided to go ahead with that and see what I could cook up with some of the other images. I found what worked on one photo didn’t necessarily work on another, so I ended up with a different look for each photo. I usually like to process a group of photos from a shoot with a similar look, but I had to make an exception this time around.
I hope you like them!
By the way. My initial “vision”, and the reason for the visit to the park in the first place, never did materialize. Oh well.
What I Pic 