The flowers of Taiwan Cherry that bloom in August herald the arrival of spring and an annual opportunity to photograph Tui and other birds that enjoy the nectar. Spring brings the beginning of longer daylight hours which I love but also brings a change in light quality with a harshness and intensity that I don’t like. One of the pleasures of winter is the low warm light that almost lasts all day and during August an obvious change becomes apparent with light through the middle hours of the day becoming bright and harsh. This slowly escalates until in summer it is only the brief fringes of the day that have a pleasing light quality. I love the long hours of daylight in summer but the intensity of light means hiding for the worst of it and sometimes it feels that there is less time to be safely outdoors than in the shorter days of the year.

Centennial Park in Rotorua has a lovely grove of Taiwan Cherry which hosts throngs of feeding Tui with occasional Bellbirds. The density of branches and blossoms creates a challenge to find clean compositions . This year I was exploring options to illustrate an upcoming post on using out of focus foreground elements and was pleased with an image that included a Tui against a clean background shown at the start of this post.

We have  a Taiwan Cherry in our garden so I have a number of opportunities to watch the Tui and Silveryes feeding. There are no really good options for a clean background but with a bit of luck and planning blurring out background and foreground elements can achieve a pleasing image.

Photos with Nikon D850 and Nikon 500mm f5.6PF lens