Photo Essay: National Cherry Blossom Festival

The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC is one of the most spectacular events of the year. Though the trees are only in bloom for a very short period of time, the festival draws in millions of tourists traveling from all over the country to see the Tidal Basin surrounded in pink and white flowers.

The 3000 Cherry Blossom trees were given to our capital by Yukio Ozaki from Japan in the early 1900’s. In return, the U.S. gave flowering dogwood trees a couple years later. There are now twice as many trees, most of which were planted in the 1960’s. The first festival was held in the spring of 1935, and now it is one of the largest and most popular festivals in Washington DC. Each year, over a million people flock to the Tidal Basin and participate in festival events.

With limited time, I arrived in DC Sunday morning prepared to take on large crowds, dodge baby strollers, not get bumped into the basin, and get some great photographs. Doing so was no easy task. It was extremely difficult to get photos with no people in my way. Trying my hardest to create serene, tranquil photos, I found that some images with people in them could be just as interesting. Getting a sense of place and time is important to me so I was not always disappointed when someone was in my viewfinder. However, I do prefer the beauty and majestic quality of light created beneath the trees, and having no one near me didn’t happen often, but when it did I tried to block everything out and imagine I was in a Japanese garden surrounded by stunning pink and white blossoms. The Cherry Blossoms acted as a soft box above my head, and the glowing light on the ground below would be the perfect light for a nice, soft portrait.

Next year, I will try harder to wake up early and hop on the Metro to the Smithsonian at sunrise. I’ll head over to the Tidal Basin, and hope the swarms of tourists have not yet arrived. This is a festival I will not want to miss out on. DC has never looked so beautiful.