The lesson that I was exploring as I took this image was from Tony Sweet:  “Pick a background and put something interesting in front of it”.  The late afternoon sun brilliantly lit up the new spring grass.  The blossoms in the pear trees lining our driveway were in partial shade.  Normally I try to pick dark backgrounds with light shining on the foreground subject.  This time it was just the opposite.  I kept a moderate aperture size to blur the background and keep the blossoms in acceptable focus.

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The emerging new growth of this Exbury Azalea surrounds and seems to protect the old growth from last year.  I moved around to get the best position of the old growth between the towering new growth.

Post processing was also simple.  I added a little contrast and structure to the leaves as well as darkened the background using NIK Viveza.  As a final touch, I lightened the center and darkened the edges with NIK Color Efex Pro.

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Today is the First of May.  It is time to appreciate the emerging Spring flora.  For the next several posts, I will focus on the emerging buds and blossoms in our back yard.  This image caught my eye as I walked by one of our Japanese Maples.  It looked like the emerging leaves were wings ready to take off and fly.

For processing, I cropped the image to put the “wings” in the right perspective in relation to the edges.  I slightly brightened the center and darkened the background to add a little pop to the leaves.

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