The winter sunshine tempted me out today to try out my new Manfrotto tripod head. My goal was a magnificent Chaenomeles shrub in the front garden of a house on the top of Highbury Hill. Chaenomeles, also known as Japanese or Flowering Quince, is part of the Rosaceae family and as the name suggests is native to Japan although it can also be found in China and Korea. This specimen is red with a hint of orange and is probably the hybrid c x superba.

The plant overhangs the wall and fortunately the pavement is wide at that point so I was able to set up my tripod without blocking the way of passing pedestrians or worse, tripping somebody over. Not that anybody worried about this except me. People are usually very accommodating to working photographers.

The shrub had plenty of closely furled buds as well as open flowers so there was a choice of subjects. Photographing it was difficult however because of the criss-cross branches behind which are distracting on the image so it was necessary to go in close with a macro lens to exclude them using an aperture of f16 for max depth of field.

As you can see from the image on the left it's well worth a look at if you happen to be passing through Highbury.