Cherry Blossoms

Spring has finally arrived in Washington, DC with the blooming of the Cherry Blossoms.  The first day of peak bloom was April 10^th this year which is a lot later then the past couple years when peak bloom was the last couple days of March and the first two days of April.  I went down to the tidal basin early in the morning (before 9:00 AM which is when the museums open and all the tour buses unload for the day) to beat the crowds. I glad I did because it wasn't tree to tree people (no walls) holding cameras, phones, or iPads trying to capture that perfect picture. Instead it was small photography groups, other early morning photographers and senior citizens walking their dogs; thus I could actually casually walk along the basin in peace. 

I shot the basin with an 18-200mm lens; while I had my macro lens I didn’t use it. I used a 100 ISO at an aperture set mostly to f8.0 or f9.0; I did bump it up to f16 and f20 for a few wide shots. My shutter speed varied depending on the light, since there were a significant number of shaded areas and I was shooting towards the sun on occasion.  I also brought a medium density graduated neutral density filter which I used to get the lovely tree and monument shot below.  I did post process the images in Lightroom.  You can see all the lovely images here.