Last week, I visited the Chicago Botanic Garden. Thankfully, there are a few greenhouses at the Botanic Garden. It was enjoyable spending a few hours in a tropical environment while the outside temperature was just above zero degrees.

Most of my time was spent photographing desert plants. I found this small flower at the end of a thorned stem to be interesting. The flower is about the size of one of my fingernails!

Desert flowerDesert flower at the Chicago Botanic Garden at 1000 Lake Cook Road in Glencoe, Illinois on February 18, 2015 I found the subject of this second photograph to be interesting as well, mostly because of the soft colors and the positioning of the bulbs.

Pink bulbsPink and green bulbs hanging from a Gasteria Batesiana plant at the Chicago Botanic Garden at 1000 Lake Cook Road in Glencoe, Illinois on February 18, 2015

Unfortunately, I don't know the name of either of these plants. Although identification signs are placed in the ground to identify each plant, there are so many plants and signs that I often had trouble telling which sign belonged to which plant!

For these two pictures, I elected to use a black background. This was not accomplished using Photoshop. Rather, I held a small piece of black foam board behind these plants. The black foam board separates the subject from what would otherwise be a distracting background. It simplifies the image and focuses the viewer's attention on my primary subject--the plant.