Visiting the National Cherry Blossom Festival in DC

One of the things I was looking forward to after moving to Virginia was visiting the National Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. I have always liked cherry blossoms, so the idea of seeing so many in one place sounded wonderful! 

The cherry blossoms were at their peak the first week of April, so that is when we visited. I knew it was going to be overcast and there would be a lot of people on the day we went, but I didn't expect it to be so incredibly dark out and for there to be so many people! 

We went on a Tuesday and there were just SO. MANY. PEOPLE! Even with the amount of people we encountered, my brother (who took a half day off work so he could meet up with us!) said it's way worse on the weekend, so I am glad we went on a weekday! 

As far as the weather, typically you want a cloudy day for taking pictures as the light is better than full sun, but it was just really really dark and overcast. Taking pictures wasn't as easy as I had hoped! Especially since most of the cherry blossoms were white instead of the pink I was expecting. So either I had the cherry blossoms exposed properly and the sky/everything else way underexposed, or the sky/everything else exposed properly and the cherry blossoms way overexposed. 

It ended up taking quite a bit of adjusting in Photoshop to get everything evened out properly (I really try to minimize my time editing in Photoshop and just get pictures right initially, but sometimes it's inevitable!).

But, despite all that I am happy with the pictures I was able to get. 

Have you ever been to a cherry blossom festival?