Cherry Blossom Time in Washington DC

Some of my best selling images are of the Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC and so each year I go down to the Tidal Basin and refresh some of those pictures, always looking for a new view or photo. This year, I decided to get up early and try for some dawn sunrise shots to get some variation, and I was rewarded with some great new shots. Although I got there at 6:30 am, the place was already busy with photographers:

Waiting for the dawn

Many people had pretty expensive cameras and lenses and were just as keen as I was!

I found my space overlooking the Jefferson Memorial and waited patiently as the sun started to illuminate the sky. In retrospect, it was quite a tricky image, as it was reasonably dark, the Memorial was floodlit, the blossoms were framing the building and moving in the wind, and so all combinations of slow shutter speed, high ASA, all seemed to make this a difficult image to process. In the end, I took bracketed shots, and after trying HDR software (which failed because the branches and blossoms were moving), I pieced together the final image in Photoshop using layers and masks. I’m very pleased with the results though!

Dawn over Jefferson Memorial

Once the sun was up, many of the photographers disappeared and so I got a relatively unimpeded set of images around the tidal basin – Cherry Blossom Festival is always very busy, but early mornings were very pleasant – the sun was illuminating the blossoms from a low angle and not many people to get in the way of the shots! I did try another image of the Jefferson Memorial – this time with flash – which I think came out nicely:

Dawn over Washington DC

You can see more of my images on my fine art photography site under Americas: Washington