Criikey, it seems an age since I last posted. Yesterday Leigh and I enjoyed the sunshine and walked into Loughborough for Sunday lunch. As we walked along the A6004 by-pass I noticed there was a tree starting to come into blossom. I only had the iPhone on me so took a hasty snap.
Plum Blossom
Nothing special, the flowers are a bit blown out, exposure control isn’t great, and it looks very much like Blackthorn; an early flowerer (not usually this early though) so it may well be an ornamental. Undeterred I used the image as the basis for three other photographs. The first using Instagram, I doubt there are many people out there with a smartphone not familiar with Instagram. I quite liked the second attempt, added a bit of centre focus as well as cropping and resizing.
For my next effort I pushed the shot through Glaze, a great photo app that allows you to turn photos into stunning paintings.
Finally I tried out another new app, Simply HDR. This is a ‘one-shot’ pseudo HDR process but the early results are very impressive. I’ll post more later in the week. I cropped this in Snapseed and added a simple with border… I like a border.
Before any sharp-eyed Reader (Reeder?) points it out, I’ve realised the first photo isn’t the dull original. I will change that later but the ‘glazed’ image.
Plum blossoms are in season in Japan – perhaps the same tree?
Hi, it may well be. I did look up Blackthorn on my Tree ID app and its from the Cherry/Plum family. The berries are called Sloe’s in the UK and are popular in Sloe Gin.
The blossoms just don’t look quite right for pure Blackthorn so it’s probably a culture of some kind.
Having looked at Jersey Joshii’s blog I would agree it’s Plum Blossom. Related to Blackthorn.
Mr. Drunkbirder,
I found another bird that might be of interest. Last photo.
http://jerseyjoshii.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/japanese-flowers-winter-wonder-week/