When: Summer

Where: Near a pond, Michigan

How: It was early morning and the sun had just peaked over the top of the trees as I was strolling along the edge of a pond looking for subjects to shoot. As I was walking, I happened to look up into the canopy of a Sycamore tree and saw this interesting combination of backlighting and shadow. The alignment of the leaves was amazingly perfect. I set up the frame with a nice tight shot to eliminate all the clutter of leaves and concentrated just on the main show. I set my f/stop at f32, as I had a lot of depth between the front leaf and the background leaf. I placed my point of focus on the small backlight leaf, which was about halfway between the front and back leaves. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time and always scanning with your eyes for subjects like this. I could have easily walked past this but was lucky on this day that I looked up.