Night Blooming Cereus
I am in awe of the natural beauty around me and capturing unique elements within a single image is what inspires my daily life as a photographer. My subject for this picture is a Night Blooming Cereus, which I believe is one of the most interesting desert plants in Phoenix, Arizona where this image was taken. What is so intriguing about this plant is, like its name, the flower only blooms in the darkness of night, and after it blooms, it only survives a day before it begins to wither and die. A life so precious, yet so fleeting is worth capturing on a camera. So, when I just so happened to be home from school on March 25, my mom told me to grab my camera because the neighbor’s Night Blooming Cereus was in full bloom. I'm happy I was home that weekend for the opportunity to take a picture of such a spectacular flower that tells such a unique story about life and death. The Night Blooming Cereus’ elegance accurately illustrates how life is so full and animated, and yet so short and sweet all at the same time.
In any nature shot that I take, I always aim for a simple, pure, and colorful image. I believe this is my style. For this photo in particular, I chose a shallow depth of field (aperture: 2) because the flower blossomed in a location that required a unique, and somewhat odd, angle. I minimized distractions from the rocks and background the best I could given the photographic circumstances. To get this angle, I laid on the ground as my 8-year-old brother assisted me (and complained the whole time as 8-year-olds do) in holding an off-camera flash to my left to fill in a minimal amount of the shadows the plant casted on the petals of the flower and the rocks below. I like the look and sense of depth that the remaining shadows add to the image so I chose to leave those in the shot. The ISO was set at 100 with a shutter speed of 1/4,000 because this image was shot close to noon on a cloudless day in sunny Gilbert, Arizona. Captured on a Nikon D3100 with a Nikon 35 mm f/1.8 lens.
Simple post processing edits consist of small adjustments to the brightness, contrast, and hue/saturation of the image. A blue filter was applied to the image to cool down the overall tone slightly. The original orange and red colors in the rocks took away attention from the flower before this step was taken in Photoshop. Overall this image closely resembles the original shot in its natural form before post processing occurred.
This can also be found on Colleen Miniuk-Sperry's blog: You Can Sleep When Your Dead. It was part of a series of posts where Northern Arizona University students were guest bloggers on her site.
