After last weeks mistake, I wasn’t going to miss the Cherry Blossom Festival at Branch Brook Park . There were many more trees in bloom and the sky was a perfect contrasty blue when the clouds cooperated. The close-up images were taken with my ancient Nikon 28-105 lens. It’s suffering from a sticky zoom mechanism, but it still delivers. The dancers are from the 10tecommai group. Enjoy !
In preparation for some springtime photography, I entered “Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Status” into Google. An instant dose of disappointment came over me when I read the headline “Coaxed by an exceptionally warm winter, thousands of cherry blossom buds have already burst open at Newark’s Branch Brook Park” in the 3rd item in the results dated March 19th (Link). I rushed over to Branch Brook Park expecting to see the trees past their peak. I was surprised to see only a few trees had actually bloomed… it turns out, the article was from last year.
Doh! .
The wind and rain killed my chances of going to see the Branchbrook Park Cherry Blossom Festival this weekend. I did get to stop by Brookdale Park in Montclair which has about 4 Cherry trees in bloom. This was one of the better images, taken with the GF1 and 20mm. I used an ND filter so I could shoot with the lens at f/1.7 to get the nice shallow depth of field. I like the monotone pastel color and the contrast on either side of the blossom in focus.