"Generally I would be awaiting a certain quality of light to illuminate at least some of the foreground and off into the distance. I think it would be rare that I would wish for no direct light to fall on the area where I hope to encourage the eye to reside. Here I wanted the reverse, with the background hill to be swamped with hard sunlight, as a fierce contrasty light on the delicate blossom would have been too aggressive.

The pink was hardly able to express itself being so subtle and had there been sunlight falling on these branches, then the photograph would have become too picturesque and the dark trunks would have converted to a mid brown. It was important to me for the knobbly 'Y' shapes of the trunks to be pronounced."