A New Perspective on Cherry Blossoms

2015-04-29

Updated: 2022-12-08

Another year, another explosion of pink when the cherry trees all over Stockholm blossom. This year I wanted to attempt presenting the cherry blossoms in a new way, which in short means no pink flowers against a sunny blue sky.

Ok, maybe one of those, for the record.

I started by re-considering photographing at night. Usually the wind makes it impossible to get a sharp photo of the flowers when the exposure time goes above about 1/100th of a second, and for night-time photo I knew I'd be exposing for between 15-30 seconds. But I was lucky, and during a pair of windless nights I went out and got my night-time photos. I'm really happy with them - both the ones with the sharp reflection in the pool in Kungsträdgården and the ones with the moon and stars shot in Akalla.

Then, one windy day, I saw the droves of flowers lying around as the trees in Kungsträdgården finished blooming and got the idea to use my new camera with 200fps video recording. Turns out that the petals blow around a lot less than you'd think, but finally I managed to catch them in the act.