The cacti are focus stacked, the rock, time stacked.

What do you call a gathering of Cactii? Interesting.

I don’t normally focus stack with my macro lens outside. Even the slightest breeze moves plants around and you lose definition.

Cactii are sturdy, with large tubular or globular stems that don’t sway in the breeze. I threw a rock into the composition for fun.

The rock needs a connection.

I took 25 pics, focus stepped, with a canon EOS R7. I controlled the camera with Canon Camera Connect. Affinity Photo 2 software focus merged the pics to produce the final images used here.

Mammilaria Mystax.

Accoring to “Picture This” my trusty plant identifier app this cactus is Mammilaria Mystax. It likes to spread in clumps and produces lots of flowers at this time of the year.

Cropped picture of the cactus flowers with surprisingly sharp definition under the windy conditions.

Pleased with the outcome, but what about the rock and its story?

The Rock in the Picture.

The rock is basalt and the original lava must have had a high gas content. The gas was lost as the lava cooled to form a rock full of holes.

Day by day every day for more than a million years minerals accumulated in these holes. The stacked effect of this daily deposition atom by atom is the rock in my picture.

My focus stack merged changes picture by picture. Time stacking merged changes in the rock daily for a million years.

The term for a rock texture where vesicles (gas bubbles) are filled with secondary minerals (quartz, calcite) is amygdaloidal.

Not sure I have successfully merged the rock story with my photography!