Sakura | Luxembourg's Cherry Blossoms

As every year, spring has arrived in Luxembourg. Although this year is a bit special, since due to the current crisis most of us are staying home.

Exploring locally

While I usually tend to explore and visit familiar locations around the country during spring, I have mostly been staying in my local area these past few weeks of lockdown in Luxembourg. It has allowed me to discover some new close-by places and in particular meet some new trees that put up a colourful show with their cherry blossoms. They are not the typical wide landscapes that I tend to photograph, but they are a nice change of pace, concentrating on details and having a more relaxed approach to photography.

Cherry blossoms have been blooming everywhere around my town and they make a perfect subject for close-up macro photography. Getting a wider angle has proven mostly complicated, since most of these trees in my area are either located in privately owned gardens or along roads. I did however discover a white cherry blossom tree in one of my local parks, where I usually don’t walk, preferring to hike in forests near and far…

The image with the white cherry blossom tree below was taken near the Al Schmelz in Steinfort. I held an exhibition with my pictures of Luxembourg City in this cultural centre a couple of years ago, but I never noticed this beautiful tree before!

I have also been taking walks in my local forest which is also waking up, albeit at a much slower pace than isolated trees. White anemones have spread all over the forest soil and create an enchanting atmosphere. I do not have a dog to walk, but I am doing these walks to take some fresh air with my 4 year-old son. It may be comparable, since he is mostly looking for branches to carry around and use as a makeshift sword. :-)

All images I took during these walks were made with my new secondary camera, the Fujifilm X100V.

Going through my photo archives

With most work nearly at a standstill lately I have also taken the opportunity to browse through my archives and work on a few images that were left behind a long time ago. Of course even that type of work is somewhat of a luxury lately, having to deal with those nagging, but overly cute, new colleagues!

I have tried concentrating on old images from the same time period of the year, so they would fit the current mood and season.

My favourite spring tree in Luxembourg City

No blog post about spring in Luxembourg would be complete without an image from my favourite tree in the city, which overlooks the Grund from high above on the Holy Ghost Plateau.

I do my best to visit this tree every year. Unfortunately renovations around the Corniche made it impossible to create new images last year. And it well seems as if the restrictions that are in place this year will keep me from visiting once more!

Spring inside

Cherry blossoms and spring have also arrived in my atelier. I recently created a whole series with my most popular images from Luxembourg City during springtime. They can be purchased as acrylic glass blocks through my online shop or by getting in touch with me.

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