As predicted, the snow from last Saturday melted away yesterday very rapidly. Despite some frost during the night, it looks like all plants, shrubs, and trees survived the drop in temperature without much damage. The flowers of our Maple Tree in front of the house looked beautiful this evening and when the setting sun created some magic light, I had to get the camera out and capture it. Over the years I took many photos of maple leaves in gorgeous light during autumn, but I don’t think I ever told a story about this maple tree in spring.
So what were the choices in order to make this click? I could have had every maple flower in focus, or at least nearly sharp, by closing the aperture down and have more depth of focus. The price to pay would have been the increase to a very high ISO value and as a result the introduction of a lot of noise in the picture. Instead I chose to shoot wide open (f/4 @ 1/640 s, ISO 400, and 200 mm focal length). Only a few maple flowers are sharp but capturing the mood of this scene and separating the subject from the background was in my humble opinion the better choice.