February is in Central California the time when the trees are starting to bloom. This creates endless opportunities for great images. I used a fill in flash to illuminate the blossoms. Using a flash makes the blossoms really stand out. Most of the time I used a manual exposure setting or as an alternative one can also set the manual override to -1 in aperture priority. Then you can play with the strobe setting. I would start with +1 to compensate the -1 on the camera.
Enjoy and keep on photographing!