Here are selected photos from the spring of 2005. I love the freshness of spring. Everything is new and the green is a soft, nascent color that hasn’t yet matured into the dark green of summer. If only there would be more foliage… I think if we combined the colors of spring with the thick foliage of summer, nature would be even more resplendent.
Two thousand five was the first year I could show Ligia the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. She’d moved to the States in the summer of 2004. We walked around for a couple of days admiring the beautiful blossoms. We even found a parking spot with relative ease.
Each subsequent year after that, the crowds that visited DC during this special time seemed to swell in number, to the point where parking spots were impossible to find, so we’d take the metro instead.
Two thousand four was the year I started to get serious about photography. I was still shooting with whatever cameras I had available instead of seeking out the best equipment I could get, but I’d started to examine my composition, my framing, the shapes I tried to capture, and photography started to appeal more and more to me.
I still remember vividly the day I took most of these photos. I’d just made a momentous decision, one which had troubled me for months, and after getting it over with, I felt the need to relax, so I went outside. It was a gorgeous spring day. The birds were chirping in the trees, the sun bathed everything in soft, warm light, and I felt at peace. Even though I was under tremendous stress, I knew everything would turn out alright. I shut every stray thought out and focused solely on the beautiful images I was seeing in nature. After an hour of walking and taking photos here and there, I was fully relaxed and ready to take on the things that would come my way.
The photos were taken with an Elura 40 MC (a Mini DV camera from Canon that took 1024×768 photos) and an Olympus C3000Z, a wonderful camera (for its time) which took wonderful and clear photos as long as it had enough light and the ISO stayed under 400.
Is there something more representative of autumn than fallen leaves, being blown about by bracing, sprightly breezes? How about branches under the sway of powerful winds, beckoning chilly autumn rainstorms? I captured these scenes on video in the autumn of 2007, in Grosvenor Park, MD, but only now got around to editing and publishing it.
I’m only sorry that I didn’t have a better video camera at the time, but such is life sometimes. Now I do, and next autumn, I’ll be ready.
You might have noticed some wonderfully dramatic storm clouds in the video. Here are a few photos I took around the same time, with a couple taken that same evening, showing those same clouds.
Raoul Pop 