This week, Ritva presents us with a unique challenge. She writes, “There are tons of ideas and themes for shooting from above – a bustling cityscape, people enjoying the waves, the mesmerizing swirls of a latté art in a coffee cup, the intricate details of a flower, or even portraiture from a height – it’s up to you to get creative with the angles you shoot at.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

I’ve taken many photos from above, usually from an airplane, maybe a drone, or a high mountain or other vantage point. For this challenge, I created an entirely new set of images during a visit to the Tucson Botanical Garden in Tucson, Arizona. Some photos here feature our walk through the butterfly exhibit “Butterfly Magic” in the Garden’s Cox Butterfly and Orchid Pavilion.

In my opening image, another visitor to the garden sits on a bench, and an owl butterfly lands on her hat. As she posed for a photograph taken by a friend, I stole this image while standing above and beside her.

Shooting from above is relative. This butterfly was hanging out on a window of the butterfly greenhouse. Even though the subject was at eye level, my viewpoint captured a view above the butterfly.

These poppies pointed almost vertically at the early afternoon sun, soaking up the sunshine. I’d captured several potential images for the challenge when a bee decided to land on the larger flower.

January in Arizona can be pretty cold, with temperatures often in the 30s on many mornings here in Tucson. Even so, flowers are in bloom as they absorb the midday sunlight.

A botanical garden in the Sonoran Desert needs plenty of water. In addition to automatic watering systems, several “hose holder” buckets were designed to store a coiled water hose while still attached to a spigot.

We snowbirds often choose to live in a desert environment during the winter, so plenty of cactus varieties are around, but I’d never seen this variety before. The Snowflake Cactus is named because of the powdery white coating covering its stems. This coating resembles a layer of snow, hence the name.

Another species of cactus in the garden is also new to me. The most prominent feature of this ball-shaped succulent is its long, curved, and reddish-brown spines. At each cluster of spines, a series of shorter, thinner spines radiate outward from the cluster’s center. A central spine is typically more prominent and more robust than the radials. Due to its flat, curved, and often reddish-brown appearance, it is frequently described as “devilish.”

We arrived at the garden around noon and spent almost three hours there. Around 2:45 PM, we discovered a sizeable G-scale model railroad as we neared the gift shop and the exit. G-scale railroads are among the largest model trains, built to a 1:24 scale. The layout comprises many scale buildings and a substantial overhead trestle. The building above is the Borromeo de Carmelo, modeled after the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, a historic Spanish mission in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

Unfortunately, the trains weren’t moving. As we exited the garden, I asked the attendant in the gift shop why the trains weren’t operating. She commented that they stopped running daily at 2:30 PM. If I had only known. I will return to capture the trains in action and share more information in a future Travel Tuesday post.

I am concluding my response to Ritva’s challenge with another photo from the butterfly exhibit. Several large glass flowers stationed around the greenhouse contain nutrients for the butterflies. I shared these images in 2K HD on my Flickr site here for those who wish to delve into the metadata and pixel-peep. Ritva’s unique challenge allowed me to think differently about composition as I visited the botanical garden.

Last week, Anne hosted the challenge she called “Resilience.” There were so many diverse responses that were powerful and thought-provoking. Next week, Egidio will reveal his challenge theme, coming in just a couple of days at noon EST on January 25, 2025. If you’d like to join in but are unsure how to get started, click here.

John Steiner