25 Mar How to Capture Beautiful Cherry Blossoms with Your Camera

Now that spring is here, more and more cherry blossoms are blooming everyday across Japan. Cherry blossom being so pink and beautiful, it is a must-take photo with your camera.

We want the photos to come out as beautiful as cherry blossoms look with your own eyes. So here are some tips to improve your photo quality when capturing cherry blossoms.

1. Set exposure on “+” side

Because cherry blossoms are whitish pink, it’s easy to turn out darker than you wish. So set the exposure on the plus side and the color of cherry blossoms will come out just nice!

Photo by Susanne Nilsson

2. Get closer to cherry blossom!

Enjoy cherry blossom as a whole and up close with your own eyes, but with your camera, get close to cherry blossom. I mean as close as your lens allows you to do so. Then, your photo might be more unique.

Photo by bealla

3. Capture cherry blossoms dancing around

As the spring wind blows, it creates a beautiful scenery of sakura petals dancing around. It will be a very photogenic scene so get your camera out and capture the perfect moment. By slowing down the shutter speed, you can express the movement of spring. Make sure to hold your camera tight so as not to get a blurred picture. If you have tripod, even better!

4. Make cherry blossom not the main subject

Cherry blossoms are so beautiful that people tend to capture it as a main subject and that is ok. But you can use cherry blossom to express the season while taking other things such as people, temples, and other sceneries.

Photo by ryuta kawakami

5. Get down low and look up to cherry blossoms

If you take photos of cherry blossoms at your eye level, there will be too many distractions. One way to make it simple and light is to take photos from low angle. Get low down on your knees or take it from the bottom of the slope and you’ll get a picture like below. Contrast of cherry blossoms’ pink and the spring blue sky will also add sharpness in your photo.

Photo by Takeshi KOUNO

6. Less sky and more exposure when it’s not too sunny

You never know if you’ll get lucky with weather. It could be crystal clear with blue sky or it could be little bit cloudy. When it’s cloudy, if you capture too much cloud in your photo, it will look heavy and dull. Make sure to capture the subject up close with more exposure. That way, the impact of cloudy sky is minimized.

Photo by Keiichi Yasu

Spring is here! Take your camera and take a beautiful cherry blossom!