I experience a peacefulness when I go work on a Saguaro portrait. There is an 'eternal-ness' about them that is hard to explain. Here in the desert they may be the cactus equivalent of the Tortoise; here before you were, and they'll be around long after you're gone.

Before I set up my camera I like to walk around them, a full 360, and I look at them from 100 feet away and up close too. Like any portrait the background matters, and the sky, and the neighbors.

I named this one 'Ready'. I saw a Robert Duvall movie years ago called 'Get Low'. It was about an old hermit who had a dream/vision that his days were numbered, it was nearly time to 'get low', as they say. To me this old soldier is reaching his arms up as if to say "Bring on the wind, punish me in the hot sun, abuse me with the rain! Give me your best shot, and return me to the earth from which I sprouted!"