There is a lot of photography advice on the net and most of it is technical in nature. The very few times I find someone stop to write their thought process when shooting, I take notice. I don’t care how they setup their camera, I want to know how they saw the photograph before they pulled the trigger. I want to know what caught their eye and how they setup the shot. I want to know what it took to get the images I see. So I thought I’d start blogging about my experiences behind the camera and how I captures some of my shots.

I carry my D90 everywhere with me. It’s like my wallet and keys, it’s always available. I never want to be the guy that sees that great opportunity for a shot and wish I had my camera. So this time I was heading to the bank and it is the first day after a week long storm. There were numerous high clouds and the sky was cobalt blue. I was just loving all the fresh air with my window down.

There, a block away from the bank, was a row of small cherry trees in the middle of town sticking out like sore thumbs. It’s a typical city street and normally these trees never caught my eye, in fact they are usually very ugly. But this time of year, they are blossoming full of vivid pink blossoms. There are hundreds of them on each tree.

So after the bank I get my camera out of my car and walk 100 yrs down the street to these trees and start to look for the best back ground being that I’m in the middle of town. My initial tendency is to look wide and then get as close as possible. I think people, including myself, start wide because we think that in order to capture this scene we need people to see as much of it as possible. However, shooting this whole corner with 6 trees is boring. You can see parked cars, another bank and even the chewing gum stuck to the sidewalk. Unless you want to get that in the shot on purpose, you need to get closer get a more compelling image.

I might try to get just one of the these trees in the shot, but that still leaves a lot of room for an ugly back ground. Closer I get and just see the canopy of these smallish trees and it’s very colorful, but it’s just a blog of pink. Lastly I get right up into it with my lens parked at 18mm and get right under one of the limbs looking straight up. All of a sudden it clicks that now I can see all the detail in these beautiful blossoms and now I have a beautiful cloud-filled sky for a background. But I still haven’t shot anything yet. I compose the limb with it entering the frame in the corner to have it lead your eye into the center of the shot where you find more blossoms. With Auto WB, picture control set to Vivid and I shoot on Auto P. Check the exposure in the LCD and my D90 got it right first try. The image as you see it as straight out of the camera.

Cherry Blossoms on a beautiful sunny day!

So if I hadn’t had my camera with me then and there I would never have caught that shot. The next time I drove past there, the blossom had faded and the sky was not as captivating. Get close and don’t let anything in the frame unless you WANT it to be there.