First Blossom ’13

Outside, hoping for spring and a little warmer weather, I noticed this tree blossom. It caught my eye because it seemed to be the only bud that had blossomed almost completely. I’m not sure why it was so much earlier than the others. It also seemed to be lit exclusively by the setting sun making the color really pop. I think the light was filtered by the other trees and branches everywhere but just the area around this blossom, and some of the buds. I almost passed up taking a photo of this while I just kept looking at it, thinking how cool it looked and trying to figure out just how the light was getting to it. Then I thought, hey that could be a good shot if I could make the image show the lighting on the blossom the way it appeared in true life. I’m an amateur at best so getting a final image to convey the actual appearance (while not going too far with it) can be a challenge. I had to move fairly quickly once I made the decision to try and preserve the image because I didn’t know how long the lighting would last. I used an aperture of 9.0 because I wanted to make the blossom the star of the image, but I didn’t want to completely lose all of the detail of the buds close to it. It was a little difficult to get close enough to frame the blossom with a 55mm since the blossom was in a tree, but I eventually managed. I usually shoot in RAW and then process the final. The only crop was to match 8X10 formatting. I did use Photoshop Elements to lighten the blossom very slightly in trying and match the appearance of the actual lighting. In hindsight I think if I would’ve spot metered the blossom it may have been more accurate. But this could’ve cost too much detail in the area around the blossom. I will give it a try if given the same lighting conditions again. Either way I’m pleased with the results. I hope you like it.