Well done! I feel it's difficult to give you a comment becouse your level of photographing is so much higer then mine. But I'll give it a try... :)

How tall is the cactus actually? I guess about a few inch? Maybe add it to Best Macro, too? Anyway, I love it. I love the other one with the red cactus too, but however I love colours in general, I prefer this one becouse of its shadows. The slightly panoramic view was a good choice, but maybe you could have shown some more cactus on the bottum of the frame. Now I feel something is missing, namely the plant's base. I figured maybe you should have cropped away the succulent, I simulated it with a peace of paper... but no... just leave it there.

groetjes
Tamara

Thanks Tamara, this is a small dish garden, the main cactus subject is about 3" tall and about 5" across. The bottom crop is because of the rim of the dish and a unattractive bulge/growth on the base of the cactus. This is a Opuntia microdasys, a Mexican succulent.

Here is a detail shot of the same type of plant that is about 3.5' tall, I guess I will have to plant mine in the ground if I want it to get that big!!:

www.clydebeamer.com/?p=70

I have a special bound with cactuses and succulents. They're the only plants which live for longer then a year at my home... :P They're Tamara-proof. I think I'll try to make something like yours of my own plants.

Thanks for sharing.

I live in Southern California in one of the valleys that regularly get at or over 100 for days at a time. We just had 9 days in a row... One thing I really like is hanging baskets, but here they just won't live. A lady told me a couple of years ago to put succulents and cacti in the hanging baskets. Worked brilliantly. This spring I had to start over 'cause they had gotten so overgrown in the baskets, I had to take them and put them in pots or in the grown and start new baskets!! Give it a try.

Where do you live?

I live in the Netherlands, about 14 kilometers at north of Amsterdam. To get an impression of the enviroment over here: www.vazaar.com/user:sfkp/photos/id:29924/
or
www.vazaar.com/user:sfkp/photos/id:29883/

In other words: wet, sometimes sunny, sometimes not, no real winters with lang lasting snow but it freezes here a couple of days a year. 100 F or 35 degrees Celsius is max, maybe a couple of days a year. So... cactussen and succulents won't live at my balkony for a long time :)

I have to agree, this is well done. Beautiful shades of green and lovely textures. If we're playing the what I would do differently game.. I might burn in/dull down (not a lot) the highlights on the smaller green plant in the left corner. They keep dragging my eye down.. but I still dig this one :)

Beamer, soon I'll feel the temperatures of California (and Nevada, Utah, Arizona) wich you desciped... becouse in october I'm going on holiday!! We booked yesterday and when I logged on Vazaar I remembered this conversation.