Cactus Flower

I've shown pictures of cactus blossoms at What's Up, Chuck? and described how they open in the evening and collapse the next day. Such a rapid change (but still over the course of a day) is an obvious subject for a time-lapse video.

Last Sunday evening gave me the opportunity to record the opening of one of the cactus blossoms.

I set up the camera and set my intervalometer to take a picture every two minutes. I set my LED desk lamp on a paver next to the camera to light up the cactus while the sun was below the horizon.

I started taking the pictures for the video at 6:36pm and let it go until 6:52 the next morning. I didn't get much sleep that night. I fretted about my camera sitting unattended in the back yard with a light shining near it. I shouldn't have worried so much. There was a lot between the light and the street so passers-by wouldn't have noticed anything.

Here's the first frame of the video. The flower is already opening. And there's a second flower about to open. Could they open together?

The cactus is lying on the ground. We had a wet winter and apparently the plants stored a lot of water and became top heavy. Many of the cactuses got so heavy their tops broke off. That's OK since cactus pieces simply take root and several new plants grow from each of the fallen parts.

The video starts while the sun is up. The lighting changes as the sun passes behind trees and clouds. When it sets, the desk lamp lights the scene with sharp, uniform lighting. The sun rises and the sharp shadows go away.

The second bud didn't open.

I raced home that evening to record the flower's end. Unfortunately, the collapse was well underway by the time I got home. And the neighboring bud was opening.

I had marked where the legs of the tripod were the night before and set the camera back where it was. I started the camera back up. I wanted to get a good night's sleep so I took the camera into the house when I went to bed.

I made my video by just letting the first segment play till I shut off the camera in the morning then continue with the second evening's segment with no transition. The second evening's action was in full swing and I didn't want to lose any action in a dissolve or fade. There is a major discontinuity but you'll get over it.

My video shows the first blossom opening from 6:36pm one evening until 6:52am the following morning. It then picks up (with the jump...I didn't get the camera exactly repositioned) at 5:19pm that evening and finishes at 10:57pm that night.

The shots were taken at two-minute intervals and play back at 15 frames per second. That works out to an hour going by every two seconds. Remember you can watch in full screen and in HD.

There are more flower buds developing. I'm going to try to record the opening and closing of a flower in one take. I'll take a day of vacation or work from home if I need to.