Because I want to (Part 2)

Last April, almost one year ago from today, I wrote a post about photographing a place called Diegten near where I live. It's a place that I always look at when driving by because it is so photogenic.

Last year I finally made  the decision to photograph a rather picturesque cow barn surrounded by cherry blossoms.

Diegten April 2011

The thing with photographing the blossom is that it only stays on the trees for a couple of days before falling off. If the weather isn't nice during those few days then you're out of luck.

My friend Stephan rang me this morning to say that the blossom was now in full bloom and that the sky was a deep blue. Ideal conditions except that the position of the sun meant that I'd be shooting directly into it. I decided instead to wait an hour or two then see what would happen with the weather.

True to form, it was overcast when I got there. my plan had been to try and get a picture of the barn framed through the cherry blossom tree branches.

I met with Stephan as arranged and we set off to find a good vantage point to shoot the barn through the trees.

Unfortunately, there was a crop growing in the field beneath the barn exactly where I would like to have stood. Also, the trees were all grouped to the left which meant that when I shot through them, I'd only be getting the left side of the barn. Not an ideal situation.

Not wanting to go home just yet, we decided to take a walk up the hill behind the barn. I'm glad we did. The sun came out and there was lots to photograph. 

The barn itself was photogenic but of more interest was the trailer standing nearby.. I switched to a 17 - 40 zoom and took a few images.

 I switched back to my 70 - 200 and tried a few "selective" landscapes.

Carrying on along the road gave us more exercise for our trigger fingers.

 A buzzard was always flying by

Finally I had to call it a day and reflect upon what we'd done.

On the way back to the car I snapped these with the 70 - 200

 1/320 sec @ f10

1/1000 sec @ f5.6

I was really pleased to be walking with the Hama Katoomba rucksack. I've previously briefly mentioned it here and here.

My days of carrying everything in a shoulder bag are ended. I could have kept on going. The bag is really comfortable. I'll write more about it soon but in the meantime here's a pic of yours truly taken today by Stephan.

Image by Stephan Abt.

Thanks for reading