Japanese maple in peak fall color

This is a follow-up image of my last post, and they show Japanese maples in very different season and conditions. This version was taken during peak fall at Kubota Garden in Seattle.

 

Story behind the scene: Before I took this image, I had seen photos of this tree online and knew it should be somewhere in the garden, but it took me three visits to finally locate it. Large as it looks in the image, the tree is actually very small and hide itself in bushes. Photography-wise, It was a very tricky location to set up the tripod and frame the tree. I tried my 15mm ultra-wide angle lens, but I have to step way back to include the tree in its entirety, which makes the tree very small in the frame. Luckily, I happened to have a fish-eye lens with me, and after some trials, I was able to photograph this tree in one frame and really exaggerate its unique shape with the perspective distortion. This might be one reason why I love wide-angle lens so much, because you can really be creative in the process and capture unique looking images that are outside of people's normal perspective.

Done