Every year the cherry trees flower in the cultivated areas of the hills of California’s coastal range, and of course I am impelled to photograph the blossoms. This season the cherry trees are flowering a tad early, like everything else in California in 2009.

My thought was to create a simple image of cherry blossoms against a white background. The elegance of the composition would be determined by the intersecting lines of two cherry branches.

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I went out with camera, tripod, and pruning sheers, and ended up creating the effect you see indoors on a light box. Here’s a luminance channel inversion of the image in the LAB color space:

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Here are some cherry blossom images of d’année passées:

2006: Cherry Blossom Special; just getting to know cherry blossoms with digital:

2007: Cherry; playing with turning a photo of a cherry blossom into a “watercolor”:

2008: Sunburst; experimenting with sensitivity (ISO) and cherry blossoms:

It’s sometimes instructive to look back through one’s work, particularly when there’s such a strong (and seasonal) annual affinity for a particular subject like these cherries. I don’t think photographing cherry blossoms will ever bore me!