While staying in Florida I visited several gardens. I took this in a really nice one that I had actually been to before. A few years back, I actually had taken a shot just like this of the same exact tree with my iPhone. I got down on the ground on my stomach and pulled back my phone pointing the lens up at the sky to get the most dynamic perspective. When I went back to Florida with my new Leica X1, I couldn’t wait to retake this shot because it was one of my favorite shots from the garden and I wanted to get a better quality photo. This time it was a little more difficult to get the shot since my camera was flat this time around. I still laid down on my stomach on the ground but wasn’t able to put my camera down completely on the ground because I didn’t want to scratch the bottom of it.

Even with my limitation of not being able to get my camera completely on the ground, I am very pleased with my shot and know it is very close to my original capture. My goal was to basically get the the perspective of an ant on the ground and have a really dramatic effect by making the tree look extremely big and towering over the viewer. In my post-processing, I applied warm preset that gave the photograph a little pop and magic to the moment. I didn’t like the really white light coming through the leaves and branches so the preset I applied made the light more golden looking which I really like.