Several years ago, my wife and I visited Lake Brownwood State Park in Texas. We got away from the kids for a few hours and had our cameras to enjoy the outdoors.

Down in the dry dead leaves, I found some succulents known as pincushion cacti. One in particular caught my eye, so I began to work it. I used my Canon S5 point-n-shoot, it’s best feature being the vari-angle screen.

You can swivel the display out and around to almost any angle. It’s excellent for putting the camera down low to the ground to capture macros of flowers and bugs.

That’s how I snapped this photo. But to make it better, I worked it in Lightroom with a radial filter or two and some global tweaks to adjust the lighting and color. Basically, I slid the sliders until I got what looked good to my eye.

For this shot, I like the muted warm colors and the texture. I tried to spotlight the cactus to pop it out from the background and surroundings.

You can also view this in my Gallery here. You won’t find it on Instagram. I do happen to have this one on my Flickr.

Enjoy!

What’s your favorite camera to use right now? Do you have any tips for me on this picture? What would make it better? Leave a comment or message me. Thanks!