Cactus Monday - Shadows

One advantage to living in a desert which gets more than 300 days of sunshine per year is that shadows are easy to stumble upon. Incredibly, I hadn't paid much attention to shadows, clouds or even reflections until this year when I started blogging and getting ideas from other blogs. Here are some shadows I've found. This first one is simple and bold:
Sometimes shadows are more animated than the objects that cast them.
My favorite shadow of an old cholla cactus skeleton looks like the head of an animal.
Some shadows are huge, but before blogging I wouldn't have noticed them.
Just for fun, I cropped out the real saguaro cacti and just left their shadows behind the desert spoon plants.
This palm tree was at Reid Park and I was actually trying to focus on a duck. The bird got away, but when I saw the palm shadow in my camera's LCD screen, I decided it was a keeper.
When my son showed me his new flowerpot, I "staged" this shadow shot by propping up the back of the pot until I was pleased with the shape of the shadow on the cement walkway.
And, I looked around for other objects to put in the sunlight, such as a small metal patio table.
I hadn't thought about capturing shadows on a portable surface like blank paper, but that's what Warren of Touch the Wind did in his post called, "purposeful shadows." Now I feel inspired to take some paper along with my camera to Sabino Canyon this week to explore different cactus shadows.

For more Cactus Monday posts, visit Teri's Painted Daisies. Have a great week!