Cherry Blossom Pink (that's actually White)

That's right, this blossom is actually white but the original was the usual heinous rusty orange, from the street lamp bleeding into the bottom, right.

Whilst having lots of ideas for blips over next few days I wanted to get at least a blossom pic in, before it falls. But, instead of waiting for daylight tomorrow and getting a 'normal' sunlit shot, I thought I should try something a bit different.

As I do loads at night, I initially tried blasting flash into the branches but no, didn't work. Specially with the huge wideangle of the widest setting of the Nikkor 10-24mm, as used here. There were drunks making a lot of noise nearby and I got nervous and only had the Gorilla Pod, for the 30 sec time exposure, which at least was very low down. I had no idea what the lens was pointing at, to be honest! This was actually only one of a couple that had any merit at all.

I like the flare; it generates a sense of intergalactic brightness, something a bit more cosmic than a nice pretty daylight shot. Cloned out bits and bobs and then hand-tinted all the blossom parts separately, after the black and white conversion - yes it took a while. The challenge and result became far more than I ever envisaged, originally it was just going to be a plain, boring black & white!

A success or not, it does show how you can rescue an uncomfortable shoot and make it a bit special, whilst still looking (almost!) natural. There are a few stars in the sky but the wide angle and levels of light pollution made them stand out much less than I would have liked.

Music is Cherry Blossom Pink Apple Blossom White, from well before my time, but has a great Latin jazz trumpet!

Lens: Nikkor 10-24mm f3.5-4.5

A sunlit cherry blossom blip is here from mid March! What a weird spring we've had...(having?)