You know spring is here when you see Snowdrops and Daffodils popping out from the ground everywhere. These are amazingly beautiful flowers. However, the real highlight of spring in term of flower photography is cherry blossom. For me, photographing cherry blossom goes hand in hand with bluebells as the “must do” for spring.
Unfortunately due to Covid restriction, going out just to photograph cherry blossom is classified as non essential travel for the right reason and therefore not allowed. The good news is that outdoor exercise like cycling is allowed. Going out cycling with my twin boys along Birmingham canals has become one of my favourite regular activities since last September. As some might know, Birmingham has more canals than Venice. That means I can go to a lot of places on the bike along the canals. One of the places I can get to is Brindley Place at the west side of City of Birmingham.
At Brindley Place, there is a little square in front of an art gallery called Ikon Gallery. This is a little beautiful place hidden within the jungle of tall buildings. In this square, there are two rows of cherry trees which display beautiful cherry blossom every year in Spring. So there you go, with my camera in my backpack, I cycled there with the boys on a nice sunny day. We took a break at Brindley Place, had some snacks, then they started playing with the water and stone features while I started taking some photos.
I am pretty sure these are not the best photos I can get out of this place but this was the best I could do in what I called opportunistic photography, with one eye on the kids.
I would sure come back to this place again in more normal time, with my tripods and at different time of the day for better light.