Each year the cereus cacti in the Sonoran desert bloom en masse on the same night. They’re triggered by the first rain. It doesn’t take much. Just a sprinkle, which is all we had this year, sets them off. Exactly one week from this precip event, every plant blooms as the sun goes down and then closes up quickly as soon as sun hits it the following morning. It’s a much anticipated event here in Tucson. The flowers look and smell lovely, and the fact that there are precious few hours to take pictures means there’s always a bit of performance anxiety for certain photographers, e.g. me.
“Opening night” was very windy and threatening rain, so it wasn’t very good for pictures. I returned to this plant the following morning when the wind was calm and worked with it until the sun started coming up. These flowers are starting to close, but still show a lot of interesting detail, I think.
Yes, I would have liked that bottom bloom in front of the stem of the other flower, but am happy to have gotten a picture this year.
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This is a “sketch-o-graph.” If you look closely you can see some dark lines at the edges. The sketch method brings some nice light and color to the shadows, so that’s why I like to use it in what is essentially a backlit subject here. However, I’m trying to keep this looking natural and not too sketchy. Let me know if you think the sketchiness is too obvious.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Is this a composite? No
However, this is a focus blend of 6 images with a bit more blur added to the background.
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These cacti are amazing and well worth waiting for the flowers. I might burn in the light spot below the RH flower as it catches my eye. Other thasn that I like your comp and the BG is soft enough, but gives a hint of what is waiting for the sun in the desert…Jim
This caught my eye right away Tony! I like how the white blooms are contrasted against the darker background.
The flowers look crystal clear. Is that the result of the “sketch”/dark lines (I can’t see the dark lines on my phone). Would love to learn more about this technique…do you have a link perhaps?
What a cool story, to catch h this during a narrow window. It’s a beautiful scene.
@Mark_Muller - I’m glad to hear this still looks sharp on the phone. The “clearness” of this probably is helped by the sketch technique since it replaces the smooth tonal transition at some edges with a thing black line, but I also think the Laowa 65-mm lens this was taken with and the focus-stacking also contribute to the effect. Maybe the blurry background also helps as it creates a visual contrast with the flowers.
Good catch on the need to do a little more burning, @Jim_Zablotny. That was on my to-do list after seeing the print and I just forgot. It definitely helps a little.
Holy Cow!! Elegance personified! I love the wabi-sabi of the one imperfect flower and the colors are wonderful, with the small touches of soft yellow against a range of blue and brown. So wonderful you could capture this amazing event!
On my 27" monitor the sketch effect is so subtle I wouldn’t have noticed it, but I love the hyper-real crispness it brings out.
Even if I didn’t know these were desert flowers, I’d have thought so. Thanks for sharing information about them and the mass blooming. Taking immediate advantage of the smallest opportunity is something common to a lot of desert dwellers I suppose. I know exactly what you mean about performance anxiety…we all suffer from it with situations like this and you conquered. Not only is it a great portrait, but you got creative with the method of capture and of processing. Would it be possible to further blur the background? Diane advocates a quick mask technique in Ps that I’ve used successfully to fine-tune the edges of the mask better than a traditional hard lasso. Seeing as you’re King of Masks it should be easy-peasy. Terrific image all around.
I’m afraid my masking techniques are not on the same planet as Tony’s – I use them because I haven’t taken time to master his luminosity (and now other) masks. But I think the large soft-edged selections that hark back to dodging and burning in the B/W darkroom still have a place in some images. They are on a different planet than making a hard-edged selection with a lasso and trying to feather it. That should be illegal.
Tony, excellent composition as always. I don’t notice the sketchiness at all. But it certainly added a level of sharpness and depth. Really nice image.
