Natural fireworks

Cactus flowers open at night and last just one day, captured by photographer Greg Krehel in some stunning timelapse sequences.

Cassandra flower timelapse9 hours of a Cassandra flower blooming.

“Since I was a kid I’ve always loved succulents and cacti. One year I ended up at a local garden shop and picked up a cactus for my collection. A couple years later it put out these awesome flowers, unlike others I had seen. It just kept blooming. It really went to town.”

Daydream flower timelapse24 hours in the life of 10 Daydream flowers.

Antimatter flower timelapseAntimatter flowers.

The colour! Greg’s often asked if he uses Photoshop to enhance it.

“I do, of course, use Photoshop and Lightroom and other editing software. But not in the way most suspect. Rather than using these tools to overstate reality, I actually use them to reduce the intensity of the colours my camera captures. I have reduced the colour saturation in every timelapse clip in this video by a minimum of 10% and some (‘Yes’, ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Antimatter’) by 30% or more in order to have something that wasn’t just completely blown out.”

Greg Krehel cactus bloomRead about the “focus stacking” technique for maximising detail.

Fascination flower timelapseFascination flowers.

Beautiful.

I’d never seen a cactus bloom. Turns out some don’t until they’re 30+ years old.

See more on Greg’s website Echinopsis Freak, with regular updates on Instagram. Via This isn’t Happiness linking to National Geographic.