It is time for my yearly Maple Blossom post. I suspect that there are still a lot of people who do not realize that the Sugar Maple, our common Maple here in New England, actually blossoms, let alone that the flowers are so delicate and so beautiful. Mostly the flowers are a just a red tinge at the branch ends high overhead. It takes a fairly long telephoto to bring them close enough to appreciate. They do, of course, fall from the trees, and you do see them in the grass and on the moss underneath, but mostly the filaments are tangled and wilted by then…they have lost their glory.

This shot, processed for HDR effect, captures the luminescent red of the flowers against a gray spring sky. Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent plus 2x digital extender for 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/800th @ ISO 320 @ f6.7. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.