Tag: cacti
A climb to the top of the local botanical garden, under the trees, through the orchard, and to the cactus garden. The tall white blob – not too sharp in this image – is a yucca in full bloom.
Nothing like watching old westerns to inspire a title . . . this was taken with wonderful Olympus XA4 and Agfa Vista 200 film, scanned with my little own hands on my Pakon 135.
A panorama . . . the original images have been printed and now await my attempt at a Hockney-like montage. It’s harder than I thought!
I’ve had an itch to create a Hockney-like photo collage . . . so I went out to the local botanical garden, camera in hand, and took a ton of pictures. All these were merged into a panorama as a precursor to making the choice of which one to create. It’s sort of hard to choose, but eventually I will make that choice. Nonetheless, I did get some photos to share.
Cacti always make me laugh (until I sit on one) because they are such crazy plants – beautiful, eerie, amazing. Having grown up in the woodlands of the midwest and east coast, I still find palms and cacti intriguing. And still alien in my concept of plants. So, the aliens amongst us are here to be seen.
Prickly pear are everywhere in my area of California, dotting hillsides and roadsides. They are really quite beautiful – from a distance – but also a wonderful food source. The pears are sweet when ripe, with a deep red fruit. The paddles are also edible, but a bit bland, and are used in making nopales. To eat a prickly pear requires a prickly pear, a pair of gloves to pick what you want, and a fire or blow torch to remove the thorns, which are long and pointy. I don’t go out harvesting, but I always enjoy photographing these cacti. Oh, and before the pears show up, the flowers are really beautiful.
We expect rain nearly every day for the next ten days . . .
Welta Weltur, 6×4.5, Kodak Ektar 100 rendered to B&W in Nik Silver Efex. Scanned with Epson V600.
