The Cherry Trees Are Blooming: Go Take a Picture!

The annual April blossoming of the cherry trees around Monmouth County is an event worth capturing on film. Photographer Angie McKenzie shares her tips: 

Equipment needed: Camera, fully charged batteries, and tripod

Scene conditions: Very early or late in the day, avoid times when the sun is shining bright and high in the sky. It also helps to have little, to no wind blowing.

TIPS

Composition: Follow the rule of thirds for visually appealing photographs and have a subject/focal point that draws your eyes into the photograph. Guidelines for Better Photographic Composition

Artistic expression: Try to avoid taking photos standing normally and holding the camera leveled the entire shoot. Take photos at unusual angles and heights for a more creative approach.

Landscapes: Keeping your camera lens wide open captures the whole scene as your subject. More about landscape photography

Get closer: Zoom in a little to focus on 1 subject or a smaller area of a scene. For example, composing a photo of a park bench by a tree can be as dramatic as a wide angle photo with a group of trees together.

CAMERA FEATURES

White balance: In your camera settings you can change your auto white balance to cloudy for a warmer color tone appearance in your photos.

DSLR users: For a deep blue sky in your landscape photos use a circular polarizer filter. To evenly balance exposure, letting more light into the bottom half and less into the top half of your landscape photos use a graduated neutral density filter.

Point and shoot users: Set your camera scene mode to landscape for medium to wide angle landscape photos and use portrait mode for isolating 1 subject. Read your camera’s manual for information about scene modes.

PRINT YOUR PHOTOS 

Setting resolution: For printing great quality photos in large print sizes, set your camera's resolution to the largest megapixel setting available. The smaller the megapixel setting,  the smaller quality prints sizes will be available to you.

Choosing photographs: Go through all your photos and select the photos that you like the most, noting the file names. 

Edit photographs: Fine tune and/or clean up your final choices, using your desired photo editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. This allows you to do a little tweaking or make a lot of changes to your photos. You can add a little more light to your photos if needed, and even remove something that was on the ground. You can also explore your software features to create something unique.

Saving edited photographs: Save your edited photos with different names so the original files stays intact.

Printing options: There is a very large range of products your photos can be printed on, online or at your local printer. Upload your photos to a photo lab website, such as Mpix.com and shutterfly.comand choose the products you want printed. Burn your photo files to a CD and take the CD to your local printer. Copy them on to a USB flash drive, and bring your USB flash drive to a photo center. Create posters, calendars, framed prints, cards, and so much more. Share with friends and family, or enjoy in your own home or workplace.