There are a great many clichés about the sakura (cherry blossoms) in Japan, and I'm not about to repeat them all here. The only thing I'll say about them is that they are a lot of fun to photograph. With that pithy introduction out of the way, I'll let the photos do the talking. First of two parts. Hope you like them!

Technical stuff: all shots with the DP3 Merrill, and (for a change) processed in Lightroom. I don't think this will be a regular thing (I have a pretty simple but effective Photoshop routine which I picked up from Ming Thein's video - which is definitely worth a look if you want to learn more about, or see a different approach to, post processing) but it doesn't hurt to try, and to be honest, if you get the exposure right in-camera, the files from the Sigma don't need much extra work. Mainly lifting the shadows and taming the highlights a bit - and exactly zero sharpening, because it is simply not needed.