The Peach Orchard

I spent some time in Napa this past weekend, shooting fall colors and chasing stormy weather. My friend and I stumbled across this peach orchard that had some of the most spectacular colors I have ever seen. It was literally a photographer's paradise. Brilliantly colored trees decorated the landscape, and beneath them were leaves of varying colors and size. We ended up shooting macro leaf shots for about 6 hours over a period of two days.

I wanted to get a shot that portrayed what it was like to sit under one of these trees. I extended the legs of my tripod, making my camera about 6 inches off the ground, getting a shot of leaves only 12 inches away from the camera, and then leaves in the distance about 10 ft away. This is a composite image of around 25 shots. The final file was just about 1.5 gigs, and is about 22,000 pixels tall. It should make for an awesome print. I spent about 15 mins zoomed in at 100% looking for bugs, the details are amazing.