Introduction
At the Tom McCall Waterfront Park there are what feels like nearly 100 cherry blossoms lining the walkway. Ushering in Spring, the cherry blossom, or simply Sakura (桜；さくら) in Japanese, has long been considered a symbol of life’s natural cycles. The weather in the Pacific Northwest being somewhat temperamental, a spectacular blossom is not always guaranteed. In previous years, I would make plans to visit, then a snap of cold rain left the branches mostly baren by the time I reached the waterfront.
This year, the bloom was incredible. A bit of unusual sun and warmer weather provided an earlier bloom. My wife and I are always looking for something to do when the weather is nice. We took advantage and went this past Sunday to admire the sakura and I immediately knew I wanted to create some photo mosaics with Bouquet.
Previous Articles
Posted below are the articles related to Bouquet. The articles titled Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial and Advanced Features of Bouquet are written in more of a tutorial style format. Both articles take less than 5 minutes to read. If you’re new to Bouquet as a platform and want to learn more about its features and how to use it, I highly recommend checking those articles out.
Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics
Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial
Better Quality Mosaics with Bouquet
Where to Download
The app is free to download. Use the links below.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634
Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/
History of Portland’s Cherry Blossoms
According to an article by the local news channel KGW8, part of NBC, the cherry blossoms were originally a gift from Japan. The gift was to commemorate the opening of the Japanese American Historical Plaza which opened in 1990. Designed by architect Robert Murase, the plaza honors the 120,000 (estimated) Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II. An estimated 4,000 of those sent to the camps were from Oregon. There are poems, sculptures, and of course, the cherry blossoms. All this in memory of those events and to raise public awareness of the diversity of cultural experiences in the United States.
If you live in the Portland area, other places to see the cherry blossoms are the Portland Japanese Garden, Hoyt Arboretum, Mt. Tabor, and Laurelhurst Park. For those who want to see cherry blossoms outside of Portland, there’s the Oregon State Capital State Park in Salem. For those curious, Oregon State Capital State Park is the actual name. Yes, capital is repeated in the title. Here’s the Google Maps listing for anyone who cares to fact-check the author.
Parent Image
Just like any other mosaic made with Bouquet, we must start with a parent image. While visiting the Tom McCall Waterfront Park, I snapped the photos seen in the gallery below. As mentioned in previous articles, I’m not the best photographer, but I try. That must count for something, right?
Since the plan is to try and produce at least one high-quality mosaic, I chose the first image in the gallery. Something about the juxtaposition between the highway bridge, orange safety cones, and cherry blossom all in a single frame makes for an interesting composition.
Repeated Images
If you look at the first couple of images in the second gallery below, you may notice what we talked about in the previous article Better Quality Mosaics with Bouquet. Since the child images used to produce this mosaic were taken from a short video, there are several repetitions. I purposefully zoomed in on the parent image from the Bouquet app to further illustrate. Look for several repetitions of the pedestrians standing on the boardwalk. Can you see them? So can I. This is a challenge you will have to overcome as the user if you want to produce better-quality mosaics. Capturing images with differing color schemes allows the app to more easily pair a child image with a particular section of a parent image.
Final Filters
In the absence of raw talent, you can always use filters like I do. After selecting several more images from my phone’s camera roll, I added them as child images and tapped “fit pieces” to regenerate the parent image. The day was sunny and then quickly turned overcast as a cloudburst hovered over the waterfront. Trying to match the mood, I selected Soft Light under the filters and then Cool. Fair warning, you do have to scroll down a bit under the filters to find Cool. I liked the result enough to share it with my wife and her family.
Conclusion
Based on my own personal preference, I find myself gravitating towards Bouquet filters like Plus Lighter, Soft Light, and Color Dodge. In my mind, the purpose of making a photo mosaic is to experiment with exaggerating the original. To satisfy my own artistic endeavors, limited they may be, I want the parent image to be an abstraction, not a perfect composition.
Bouquet is free to download and free when exporting smaller resolution mosaics. There is absolutely no risk in trying the app for yourself. You never know what you might create.
Give it a try and be sure to tag us on Instagram @solaofamerica. We want to see all your unique creations. As always, leave a comment below or write the author directly at michael@sola.inc with any suggestions for future content or feedback. Thanks for reading!
Where to Download
The app is free to download. Use the links below.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634
Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/
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