Cactus Flowers-2197a-med

Bravo, I love it a lot!

Blooming cactus flowers, hand-held. In retrospect I could have and should have used a

smaller aperture for greater DoF.

I love seeing cacti blooms, and you have captured this one well.  It is well composed and colors , exposure seem to be good.  

Excellent shot -- I believe if you had greater depth of field it might be a pretty busy image.  The flowers, the bug, the needles to the front sharp (pun intended) the rest blurry.  Green color masses around the flowers on three sides, multicolored gravel? below -- works a treat.

Maurizio/Bill/Sandy,

Thank you for your feedback. I was also thinking about avoiding too much detail, so I'm glad you like this outcome. If I had had a tripod and time, I might have done a few more detailed variations. Thanks, again.

There are a lot of elements in this shot (all good) but I still think just a bit more dof,, maybe f11 to 14 would still work. But, I understand your point of not having everything needed to try out all possibilities- outside shots are always hard (IMO)  beautiful colors and you see several stages of the bloom. G

Greg, this opportunity popped up unexpectedly along the trail to an ice cave. I had to convince my wife and the tour guide to stop for a minute so I could try to capture this flower. The cave was a bust, but I'm very happy with my cactus flowers. Thanks for viewing and your kind comments.

A very well composed and interesting capture. Plenty to view all with nice colours and detail. Best regards Ken.

Ken, thank you for your interest and feedback. Funny how perfect hindsight can be. Now I look at this and see all the missed opportunities. I appreciate your comments.

A visual feast comprised of vivid color and the tack sharp detail on the blooms. Excellent work.  

By the way, I noticed that the focal length you used was 85 mm.  Was the lens a macro, by any chance?

Michael, thank you for your kind comments and feedback. The lens was Nikons 18-105mm kit lens. The image is substantially cropped.