This incredible 400 year old tree had been on my photography bucket list for as long as I can remember so I was very excited as I approached it with all my gear in tow. That excitement quickly turned to dismay as the custodians of the tree have a bizarre rule that disallows the use of tripods within 100ft of the trunk. The way these high pixel images are taken rely on the use of tripods, however, not to be put off, I removed the panoramic head from my tripod and attempted to shoot the panorama by holding the equipment on the ground as steady as possible. The ground was wet as it was lightly raining so I knew that I was going to get filthy as there is also another even more bizarre rule…no blankets of any kind within 100ft.
So I lay down on the ground and started the process using the fastest camera settings possible to counteract any unsteadiness in my grasp. I managed to get the first panorama captured and was just resetting to do my second backup capture when an official came up to me and stated that there was no sitting or laying down allowed within 100ft of the tree. By this time the rain was starting to increase so I decided to cut my losses and hope that what I had captured was good enough.
When I got back to my computer to look at the images I was elated that everything had worked in one take and so stitched up the image to what you see here now. As exasperated as I was at the time, I now look back on this with quite a sense of pride and achievement .