Mexico/Baja: Cacti & Succulents Up Close & Personal

While cardon cacti and boojum trees are massive, there are many smaller cacti and succulents close to the ground that have beautiful flowers and otherworldly shapes and feature. Some of the bigger cacti are also great targets for macro photography. The tiny mammilaria and fishhook cacti are only a few inches tall but have arrays of beautiful flowers on their tops. Opuntsias and other chollas have needle that almost can pierce bodyarmor and most definitely your shoes and soles and your skin. Massive candelabra cacti have tiny yellow flowers that appear on stocks. Claretcup cacti explode with beautiful red flowers. And just zooming on the curved and weird needles of the barrel cacti or the hair of the bearded cacti makes for awesome shots. Several species of aloe have thick leaves that wrap around each other in their hearts. And ocotillo blooms this time of the year with stunning red flowers on empty branches.