The Fiery Guard of the Golden Horizon

There is one thing that fascinates me about the cactuses. They don't require anything special except a little bit of soil, lots of sunshine, and the ability to grow slowly but surely season by season.

On that hot summer day when the sun was gradually setting down, I saw how the sharp outlines of those plants on my terrace perfectly fit the sunset view. It seemed like the sunset was painting the sky in vivid shades of orange, gold, and blue. I understood that I had to catch a beautiful combination of roughness of those plants and the ephemeral beauty of the sky.

The main object of the first picture is the silhouette of a cactus. It is placed before the setting sun so that the unique shape of the plant becomes the focal point of the picture with its dark silhouette against the light.

It seems like the bright, white-hot sun is shining through the gaps of the stems and outlines the needles of the cactus with a golden ring. Above there are the soft gray-and-gold clouds spreading over the fire-orange horizon.

In the case of the second image, my goal was to capture an impressive landscape. In the picture, the sky represents a battlefield of golden sunlight and dark blue storm clouds approaching from above. Two different kinds of cacti form the sides of the lower part of the picture, and their black, stretched branches are directed up to the impressive sky like two hands praising the end of the day.

The horizon in the picture is wide and reveals the sunset of the sun over the far city with the amazing band of the yellowish sunlight under the dark clouds.

Taking the pictures helped me understand how easily we can become inspired just being where we are. No one needs to travel to the middle of the desert to feel the beauty of the desert sunset. Sometimes it takes nothing but going out and observing a small potted plant on the windowsill and admiring the changing of colors in the sky.