pick me up

It is often said that photos taken from heights other than eye-level tend to be interesting because we normally don't see from that angle of view. When I saw the leaf, I wondered how it would look from its 'height'. When we look at another fellow human being, we see the person and the background that stretches towards horizons.

To achieve the same nature of background, I brought the camera down to the height 2-3 inches above ground. Already too low for most tripods. Some tablepods might do. But in my case, I decided to handhold. The only way of reaching the viewfinder of the Canon 30D that low was for me to lie down perpendicularly to the direction the lens was pointing to. (Bringing a mat would have helped but I wasn't expecting the opportunity, so had to lie on the ground. Another useful accessory would have been a vertical viewfinder.)

Another thing about the background was that I didn't want it to appear too 'far' behind the leaf. Neither did I want it to be sharp enough for it to swallow the leaf in. So I chose a spot about 3.5 meters from the leaf and zoomed in to 85mm so the depth of the background is compressed. The aperture was set to the maximum for that focal length, f/5.6, to keep the background sufficiently blurred.

I felt that when some people appeared in the background (i.e. at the back of the leaf not too far behind) as in the picture, the leaf became 'one of us'. I waited for the moment. Finally, I gave it a little bit of warm touch in post-processing.

Location: University of Melbourne, Australia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D
Lens: Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS
ISO: 100
Exposure: 1/200s
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 85mm
Filter: N/A
Flash: No
Tripod: No