The 3,200 year-old giant sequoia tree in California’s Sequoia National Park has around 2 billion leaves and stands 74 meters tall.
The portrait of the giant Sequoia taken by National Geographic, is actually a mosaic of a total 126 photographs in order to capture the stunning full-length shot.
This giant sequoia tree is NOT the tallest tree in the world. But it is definitely one of the largest, in terms of mass.
“We know that there are trees that have bigger trunks, but when you add up all of the wood beside the main trunk – all of the limbs, all of the branches, all of the bio-mass above the ground – this tree is likely the biggest,” said Steve Sillett of Humboldt State University.
The stunning shot of the tree was featured as a five page fold-out in the December 2012 edition of National Geographic.
“The reason we want to do these portraits – people get it. When they see the tree in its totality without distortion, they gasp,” said photographer Michael Nichols.
The photographic team captured the pictures using an innovative rigging technique, which was pioneered by Mr Nichols in 2009, when created an 84-image composite of a 300-foot-tall redwood tree.
Giant sequoias live at high elevations and can endure cold, heavy snow and even lightning strikes. They grow in bulk and not as high as coast redwoods.
