UNCANNY CACTI This portrait series focuses on two desert icons — the Joshua Tree and the Saguaro, native to the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. I crop tightly in-camera so that only the upper branches remain, no horizon, no ground, nothing to place them. Shot at golden hour and then color-shifted in post production, each plant comes out looking slightly invented, closer to confection than to fact.
I'm drawn to the way these plants sit at the edge of the familiar and the surreal — ancient organisms that are also strange, almost characters in their own right. And they're vanishing: drought, development, a slow attrition. So the photographs are also a form of record-keeping, an attempt to honor their presence while there's still something to keep.
The aim is to hold two things at once — wonder and unease — while finding, in their odd familiarity, some sense of our own connection to the natural world.