This is how I have it setup in L5 for my files upload. I think Request::all() gets you file info as to location in the server. What that means is you can do a $Request:all() and then based on the Apache server path and temp file name you could then do a File::get($path), but rather just use Request::file().
if (Request::hasFile('file'))
{
$allFiles = Request::file('file');
// if multi file upload then it will be array, write to an array
if (!is_array($allFiles))
{
$allFiles = array($allFiles);
}
}
// foreach through each file