Methods

Summary of Capturing the Tree and Moss

I took a picture of a tree named “Honey Locust” located to the side of the parking lot next to the Life Sciences Building. I took a few steps away from the tree and captured a wide shot at eye level. The camera was in portrait mode showing the tree in the middle of the frame. The picture was from the ground to the top of the tree before branches extended from the tree. Behind the tree was a gray fence and the Life Sciences Building. The Life Sciences Building stood to the right of the the Honey Locust tree and there was another tree to the right captured in the shot. For the second picture, I stepped closer to the tree just until the words “Honey Locust” came into focus. The Life Science Building was also in the background of this image and the tree to the right of Honey Locust was also present. The lowest two branches extending from the tree were more visible than in the previous picture. Finally, I took a close up image of the tree showing the moss and the bark just below the sign. The tree occupied most of the frame but not all of it. The moss was the focal point of the image. 

Summary of Making the Figure

First, I imported the 3 pictures into Inkscape. Then I set the width of each picture to 500 mm. I aligned the pictures from corner to corner. Then I made a text box of width 40 mm and typed in the letter “a.” Then I made a white rectangle of width 80 and layered it under the letter. I then centered the letter “a” in in the rectangle. I dragged the rectangle with the centered letter to the top left corner of the figure. I repeated this process with letters “b” and “c” for the next two figures. Then I made two freehand lines of width 6. I put a marker on both of them to make them arrows. I put a white filling on the markers. I positioned the first arrow to point to the moss and the second arrow to point to the bark on the tree. Then I exported the file to create a PNG image. I saved this image onto my computer.