The above photo of the barrel cactus was taken at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park near Borrego Springs, California. Borrego is the Spanish word for bighorn sheep, but unfortunately we didn’t see any of the park’s resident borregos while we were there. On the plus side though, there were still lots of spring blossoms. Because of the windy conditions though, I focused on cactus and other substantial plants that were less affected by the gusts. In this photo, you may notice quite a bit of motion blur in the smaller plants.
I love the grand sense of scale we feel in many of the desert parks. Distant mountain peaks provide a context to the size of the desert, so you constantly feel the contrast of near and far. Just as a good landscape photo should have a foreground, a middle ground and a background, a desert vista provides that same progression from the objects around you to the mountains in the distance and the sky beyond.
