Lighting

The second element I chose to explore with this project was lighting. I took these pictures early in the day when there was plenty of directional sunlight illuminating the cactus and creating some good shadows. I think this kind of lighting shows the 3-dimensional nature of the object, since photographs sometimes have a tendency to make things look flat. For the cactus, the lighting highlights the grooves that surround it and the shape of the arms, which makes more interesting photographs.

Texture

I chose to explore the element of texture because a cactus has very unique textures and it is not all uniform as one might expect. To photograph the texture, I got very close to the cactus. By taking pictures on the side that was not in direct sunlight, I was able to eliminate shadows and let the textures stand on their own. I tried to photograph a variety of textures on the cactus, but by no means did I capture all of them since there were so many to choose from. Still, I think photographing the texture of an object gives us a more complete perspective of what it looks and feels like (although I would  not recommend touching a cactus).

Perspectives on a Cactus