State Street, Santa Barbara, CA. I'd taken a number of pictures of Amy just like this one before she commandeered the camera and turned it around on me. Not bad Amy, not bad. I'm usually very hard to take pictures of.

This is a barrel cactus at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens, taken in August 2005. If all things growing there, this was one of the most interesting. This photography was once said to be remeniscent of "a spiny boob." I was thinking of making that the title, but hey, this is a family-oriented site (not that my 5,7,and 9-year old cousins wouldn't get a kick out of it). I don't have the EXIF data handy, but it was probably taken somewhere around f/8 with a Nikkor 18-70mm DX lens somewhere between 50mm and 70mm at ISO 200. The key light source was an off-camera-right SB-600 speedlight with Sto-fen Omni-bounce, +2 stops, with ambient exposure compensation at -2.