Birmingham

Cherry Blossom at Brindley Place (Ikon Gallery)

| kstphotographynet@gmail.com

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.

Centenary Square Birmingham 2019

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A few years ago, Birmingham City Council decided that the famous and popular Centenary Square needed a revamp. The project started in 2017 with some controversy, not least the chopping down of Birmingham’s oldest tree.

Since then, the square which is one of the main attractions of Birmingham has been out of action, replaced by endless chaos caused by construction.

Fast forward to 2019, the square is finally reopenned!

I didn’t find that out through the news or anything. What happened was my twitter feed was full of pictures of the new square tweeted by my fellow photographers. You guess what happened next? How can I resist?

So I woke up very early one morning. I figured out there will be less people walking around in the early hour of the morning before the rush hour. However, what I didn’t realise was that one of the main features of the square, ie the foundation wasn’t turned on that early! Anyway, I was able to take some photos which I thought was fine but not great. I am sure I will be back there again taking more pictures.

Birmingham Mailbox

Image | | kstphotographynet@gmail.com

Birmingham miscellaneous snapshot

Coming out of the car park lift, I was heading towards Rodizio Rico, my favourite Brazilian restaurant in the Mailbox, Birmingham. With my camera with me all the time, I always look out for photographic opportunity. As I was walking towards the door, I thought the light effect can make a good black and white photograph. I was planning to just take picture of the door with some restaurant tables and chairs as foreground. When I looked through the viewfinder, suddenly to my surprise I saw a group of people walking into the building. There were males, females, kids and adults. Wow! Without hesitation, I took a few shots, trying to include part of the restaurants on the sides to give it a bit of context. It was not easy to get enough details of the inside without losing details of the building outside but I think eventually I have a good balance.

27mm, f/3.6, 1/60s, ISO 250.