In the dead of winter there’s not much color, even in California’s usually highly saturated gardens. The Tilden Park Botanic Garden emphasizes California native plants. It’s always a wonderful place to wander, but at the turning of the year I looked for texture and form rather than color.

The succulent gardens, and in particularly these agaves, seemed to answer my needs. I multi-shot the images for High Dynamic Range (HDR) in black and white using my new 40mm macro lens. My idea in processing the image was to create an effect almost like an etching rather than a photo, as in Tomales Bay and Choosing the Path.

Full exposure data: 40mm macro lens, four exposures at shutter speeds from 2.5 seconds to 1/6 of a second, each exposure at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted; exposures combined using Nik HDR Efex Pro and hand-HDR.

Related image: Succulent.