Monsoon saguaros in black and white
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For old desert rats, the summer monsoons are a religious experience, and the giant saguaro cacti are its priests.
To the Tohono O’odham (desert people) tribe, which predates the arrival of the Spanish and holds the second largest tribal reservation in the United States, the saguaros are ancestors.

The desert in the time of the monsoon is a lush experience. The Sonoran Desert is the wettest desert on earth. The heat can be epic. As the desert floor heats up, air rises, creating a low pressure area that draws moisture in. As the air rises, it cools, and if it reaches the dew point, rain may fall.

The rains cool the desert floor, and the sweet smell of creosote fills the air. It is an experience every desert dweller comes to cherish, and the scent is synonymous to falling rain.

This batch of photos was shot in early afternoon one monsoon day in late August along a two lane state road north of Tucson, Arizona.
This particular area is home to many very old saguaros. The older they are, the more arms they produce. The shapes and twists of these cacti seem like the work of a celestial artist.
Growing from the parched earth, arms upstretched toward the sky, they seem to beckon the summer rains.
Though originally shot in color, I have chosen to make most of these images black and white in order to create the illusion that they were shot in moonlight.
Photoshop allows me to manipulate individual colors when converting to black and white. By removing most or all of the cyan and blue I create the jet black portions of the sky.
In some shots, no clouds were included. In others they give the sense of the building torrent to come.

On the particular late-August day when these were shot, it was over 106 degrees, and quite steamy. Fast as I drank water, I became more dehydrated as the shoot continued. After a couple of hours I called it quits for the day and headed home.

These are just starting points toward what will come later.