I captured these cactus flowers a few days ago (Saturday, April 17) while on a fabulously fun getaway with my best friends from high school. We have a reunion once a year and this time we enjoyed the beauty and great weather of St.George / Las Vegas (thanks to the amazing Sharilyn Green, our hostess). These blossoms only last one day, and as you can see, this robust little cactus produced eight blossoms at once! Five had just finished the day before.

I used my Canon Rebel T1i with my favorite lens: CanonEF 85 mm 1:1.8. I stopped down the light with exposure compensation and I used the Aperture Priority mode (AV) with an F stop at about 1.8 to 2.5 to get the shallow depth of field, also known as background blur or “bokeh”. I did not crop, or add any edits whatsoever with these images. I shot these at about 11:00am and there were no clouds, so the time of day was not the best. This camera and lens combination make it easy to get nice shots, even when the lighting conditions are not optimal.