Best of Sheffield - A Photography Guide for Cherry Blossoms

April is when Sheffield becomes worth photographing in colour. The parks fill with blossom, and the days are long enough to wait for a break in the cloud. The weather will not keep a promise. Days sit around 13°C, nights around 5°C, a frost is still possible, and rain is common enough to waste a plan made too far ahead.

The trees are no more cooperative. They do not open together. In 2019 the first wave was already out in late March; the next held until mid-April. That gap is the cultivar. Flowering cherry has long been one of the city’s street trees, and the later ones are often Prunus ‘Kanzan’, the double pink that fills British roads in the second half of April. The March trees are earlier, and usually paler. One weekend gives you one wave, not both.

These are the five places I used, in the order they opened.

Sheaf Valley - Park Hill

Best time to view: Late March

Arrive by train. Services run in from London, Manchester, Liverpool, the North East and the south-west, and the Supertram continues into the centre. The park is the short climb behind the station, the same steps as the sunset view over Park Hill.

It is an easy place to be: grass, somewhere to sit, and blossom close enough to the tram lines that the flower and the city fit in one frame. That pairing is the picture. A branch against nothing could be any park in England.

A branch with a tram, the estate and a western sky is Sheffield. Stay for the last hour if the cloud is working. In a grey noon the trees are still there, but you have lost the reason to stand on that hill.

Crookes Valley Park - West Bank

Best time to view: Late March

The park is on the university side of the city, a few minutes from Western Bank. Walk in and continue to the lake. In 2019 the show was two or three trees in full flower over the water, more generous than anything at Sheaf Valley. If the air is still, the lake gives you the branches a second time.

I was shooting around an afternoon class, which was an accident worth keeping. Before the lecture the light was on the flowers. Afterwards it was behind them. The backlight frame is the one I kept: the petals went thin and bright, and the tree held its shape against a pale sky.

Front light records the pink. Backlight records the structure of the flower. If you only walk it once, do both, and shoot the backlight while the sun is still high enough to get through the crown.

It is also the obvious place to sit. I still wish I had left a camera on a tripod. I did not, and a week later the trees were no longer the picture.

Peace Garden - City Centre

Best time to view: Late March

The gardens sit against the Town Hall, so the location is perfect and the photograph is not. There are only a few trees, the angles are tight, and the buildings take the morning and afternoon light before it reaches the blossom cleanly. I never found a frame here as easy as the lake.

Use the collision, not a portrait of a tree. The Town Hall, the stone and a pink branch in the same picture are the reason to stop. On a bright afternoon the petals burn out and the stone goes heavy. Cloud is kinder. If the sky is empty and the light is hard, go somewhere the flower has room.

Netherthorpe Road - Netherthorpe

Best time to view: Mid-April

A row of street trees beside the Netherthorpe Road stop on the Supertram blue route. An ordinary pavement. No gate to tell you that you have arrived.

It opens later than the parks above, which is the usual timing of the double-pink street cherries, ‘Kanzan’ among them. So, do not write the city off because the March trees have gone over.

Stand at one end of the row and look along the pavement, not at a single crown. It is residential. Keep the tripod off people’s frontages.

Weston Park - West Bank

Best time to view: Mid-April

Weston Park is the large park on the same university edge as Crookes Valley: lawns, paths, and grey squirrels that treat it as theirs. I came here often enough just to sit once the sun appeared. Weekends fill up. A weekday morning is the useful version.

Do not search the park for a canopy. That year the blossom was gathered at the Brook Hill entrance, around the statue of Ebenezer Elliott. The frame is the figure, the trees and enough lawn to give them air. The rest was a pleasant park with nothing worth the walk.

Shooting them

The habits that mattered all came from the weather.

• Book two dates, or accept one wave. Late March for Sheaf Valley, Crookes Valley and the Peace Gardens. Mid-April for Netherthorpe Road and Weston Park. The second visit is a different tree, not another chance at the first.

  
  

• Treat a week as the life of the picture. Wind off the hills strips the petals, and the leaves follow. If a tree is at its best on the day you are free, photograph it. The timelapse can be postponed. The blossom cannot.

  
  

• Let a clear afternoon override the plan. Sheffield will produce one inside an otherwise useless week. Overcast is still workable, and for pale petals it is often better than hard sun, which clips the highlights. Rain and wind together are the combination to abandon.

  
  

• Expose for the flower. In backlight, hold the petals and let the sky go bright. In front light, watch the highlights on anything pale pink. Focus on one cluster, not the whole crown. Pink against a blank sky goes empty very quickly.

  
  

• Give the wind a job. A short shutter keeps a cluster sharp. A longer one turns falling petals into streaks. Either is a picture. A shutter in between, in a Sheffield breeze, is only blur you did not choose.

  
  

• Put a second subject in the frame. A cherry against a lawn is a record of a tree. The frames that belong to this city include the tram at Sheaf Valley, the lake at Crookes, the Town Hall in the Peace Gardens, the line of the pavement at Netherthorpe, or the statue at Weston Park.

If you live here, the method is patience and a bag by the door. If you are coming in for the flowers, look at a picture taken in the last two days before you book the train, and do not expect the same trees on the way home.