We view from the front...
But backlighting is better
An old apple tree in the garden of another house across the field at the back of where we are living is in full blossom at the moment... a myriad white petals tinged with a hint of pink, and bright green leaves in-between the blossoms. Throughout the day it looks like many other fruit trees in flower... but this evening it looked spectacular.
The weather today had been hot and the atmosphere was very clear... so with no haze there was a clarity with everything distant from near to far. The image above was taken at 7:00pm... the apple tree only a short distance to the right of the trajectory of the setting sun which went down behind the wooded horizon just after 8:30pm.
I was using an old 80-200mm f/4 manual Nikkor zoom lens on my D200, and was aware that the shallow, round lens hood was only 1.5 inches (4 cms) deep. Because the sun was quite low and shining more or less into the lens I could see a bright area of flare at the bottom right of the viewfinder image, seriously degrading part of the overall contre-jour effect.
The zoom lens was set to a focal length of 135mm for the composition I wanted - cutting out an overhead power line with its concrete column and transformer on the left, a stone barn on the right and an untidy ploughed field in the foreground. I couldn't reposition the huge walnut tree behind the apple, nor the large fig bush to the right - already bearing hundreds of hard, tiny green fruits which will eventually ripen and disappear into the hands of passing farmers and walkers as the bush is on an un-surfaced country lane hidden from view from here by a grassy bank. Nor could I utilise the bowed apple tree in our garden which is in full blossom (and photographed recently in close-up) as a visual framing device because an unsightly fence is in the way. As I had the camera and lens mounted on my now indispensable Gitzo monopod I was able, after framing and focusing, to place my left hand extended from the side of the lens hood and watch in the camera viewfinder how much of the flare could be eliminated before my out-of-focus hand strayed into vision.
I wasn't sure whether this remedy would be effective, and it was very difficult to confirm on the camera's playback screen at the scene... but after downloading the images onto my Mac I could see that everything was perfect. I had bracketed exposures half a stop either way, but the camera auto-metered one was spot-on. I only sharpened the image slightly in Photoshop because more would have destroyed the backlit effect showing the blossom at its best. Throughout the day the sun is largely on the front of this tree... which usually makes it look rather flat and insignificant. But in the evening, as was the case tonight, with the sun behind, the tree comes alive... through half-closed eyes it could almost look like spray and spume seen when surf crashes over rocks. However, it is perfectly still... apart from the many insects busily feeding and pollinating. 
Apple Trees in Blossom, Eragny, 1895
Giclee Print
Pissarro, Camille
40 in. x 30 in.
Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed Mounted
10:29:52 PM 
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