Cylindropuntia bigelovii, ‘teddy bear’ cholla

There’s an enormous patch of cholla cactus on the southern slope of the road leading towards highway 10 on the way out of Joshua Tree, I always like to stop here and take a few photos. On this particular visit I couldn’t stop myself from talking to another photographer about his gear – he was lugging along a medium format Mamiya with a fancy digital back, apparently this was his fancy xmas gift to himself! Lucky guy!  These cactus’s are nasty things if you get the spines in your flesh, but they’re beautiful, and these were in flower. I spent a few minutes playing with another one of my presents – a set of Zeikos macro filters from David. These are a really affordable addition to your camera kit and as you can see, the quality is pretty good. I shot these with the Canon 50mm 1.4 and the 10x filter.

Macro samples below the jump..