Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Seems Worthy Enough for Spring

Last week was too soon but was today too late for another shot at the sakura? Most of the sakura in the lower areas were well past their prime by today. With the down pour of rain that continued on through half of the day, I wasn't feeling very hopeful. After falling asleep for 30 minutes, the rain decided to finally stop gushing around 2PM but continued with delicate bursts. I put the lens hood on my camera and fixed up the best weather sealing I could manage. A plastic bag taped around the end of my lens hood. That was a great idea. It would have been a mistake to try to use it without.

Due to the rain I didn't imagine many people would be up there. I was wrong about that. All the boys, and a few girls, were out with their cameras trying to capture the big sakura tree. Everyone was hanging out on some upper terraces but I didn't find those views very good. It was very windy and rather annoying trying to take a good picture at first. Trying to keep the lens free from rain spray was terrible. There are reasons that I don't like shooting pictures in the rain. I did manage to pull a decent shot until I decided to try my luck at the surrounding smaller trees.

Hyotan Sakura_02

Unfortunately most of the smaller sakura were going quite stale in color. The lighting was poor as well. Oh the woes of photography. After wandering off for awhile, the skies began to clear off a bit more.

Hyotan Sakura_03

I scrambled back up toward the big tree but this time I decided if the sun was going to come out I better get a good spot. I'm sure everyone else was trying to capture some artistic shot of the tree being illuminated from the side. I just wanted a good picture of what it looked like more than anything. I went down the slope and got into position for when the inevitable sun break would occur.

Hyotan Sakura_05

Bingo. One guy came down the path but looked at me with dismay probably wishing he had taken up my spot first. The worst part of this is that forsaken brown sign at the bottom of the picture. Whoever put that is a moron. If I was alone there I would tear it down just to make my picture look better.

Hyotan Sakura_12

I'm happy the blue sky showed itself.

The Hyotan, as it's called, is a nice tree. I just don't care much for shooting pictures places with a bunch of other people. This is just coddled nature anyway. But who am I kidding? It still made for a good picture.

Hyotan Sakura_13

Bam!

A few more trailing colors of spring will follow in the next post so keep a look out.

No comments:

Post a Comment