Cherry Trees and other photogenic things at High Park in Toronto

This past Saturday I took a little trip to High Park in Toronto to shoot the blooming cherry trees.  No, that's not a cuss word there, the cherry trees are in full bloom at this time of year.  Last year, Sonia and I went out to shoot them on Mother's day weekend - since they were late last year due to the late spring.  Well, let's just say that it was busier than I thought a park could possibly be.  It took us almost an hour to find parking, and then I had to settle for pictures with lots and lots of people in them.

This year I got up early, at the crack of dawn so to speak. I was at the park at 6:25 just prior to sunrise.  There were people there, but not nearly as many as before, and every one of them had a camera.  But as many people as there were, we were all there for a purpose, and pretty much stayed out of each other's way ...

Got some really cool shots :

Robin peaking through the blossoms

After a while, I had shot all the cherry blossoms that I came to shoot, but the park is much more than that.  I took a look at the flowers poking their heads out in the lawn, and the newly bloomed daffodils and hyacinths.  That's when I broke out the old macro lens - Nikon 60mm F2.8.  I love this lens ...  I took some shots with by Blackberry to show my setup on some of the shots as well for documentation purposes.

Thesetup to get the Violet shot. 
Note: Flash is turned off.

Rear Lit Daffodil

Lighting setup for the Daffodil shot

Yep, the camera is upside down

The last couple of shots of the Hyacinth were pretty cool.  The very last one was done using the setup above - the camera is upside down.  I framed using liveview and then auto focus as I could not get in close enough to use the viewfinder.  A lot of people stopped to watch me do this one, lying on my stomach trying to get the shot just right.  It's entirely worth it though, as I love the shot.

The tripod is a Manfrotto 190CXPRO3 carbon fibre with an 804/RC2 ball head.  It's nice and light (bought it for Banff).  IT goes almost flat and the centre coloum extends horizontally - what I used for this shot and the others.  It's an awesome tripod for this kind of thing, and it's rock solid - good enough to hold my D300S with a large lens on it.  Rock solid.