It’s almost that time of year again, when the cherry blossoms bloom along the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. Above is a photograph I created from a previous year. As you can see, it was on the tail end of peak bloom when the petals start falling, covering the ground, the trail, and the water of the Tidal Basin.

In this image we see a couple of National Park Service rangers walking down the trail from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial towards the trail along the Tidal Basin. I loved the placement of the rangers on the curved trail, both smiling, one looking towards the other, having a pleasant conversation as they walk. I loved all the scattered pink petals on the ground and on the two benches.

I created a number of frames, but this was my favorite. I do wish the orange construction cones hadn’t been placed along the pavement in the back of the image, but I could probably remove those in Photoshop if I chose to. It was a very overcast day, so there were no harsh hot spots or shadows.

Technical Details

Because it was overcast and I was hand holding and experimenting, I wanted a shutter speed fast enough to minimize the risk of blur caused by camera movement. So I set my ISO to 1600, giving me a shutter speed of 1/100 sec at an aperture of f/8. I used f/8 because I wanted a reasonable depth of field, and at 16 mm this worked very well. I love using my Nikon 16-35 mm lens when walking around town photographing these wider angle scenes.

To add a little punch and warmth to the color I often use a warming polarizer in scenes like this, with leaves or flowers as a major focus. The specific polarizer I like is my Singh-Ray LB “Lighter, Brighter” Warming Polarizer. Being a polarizer, it reduces any glare on the leaves and petals, which helps naturally add a bit of saturation to the color. And the warming aspect of this particular filter adds just a touch of warmth, something you could do in post-processing, but I enjoy being behind the camera more than the computer so I try to handle as much as I can in the field. That being said, I do still usually tweak various settings in post.

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