Echinopsis cacti bloom in a blaze of brilliant color, but it's tough to catch them in the act. They typically flower at night and as quickly as they pop, the petals begin to fade. "They're only at their best for an hour or so," Greg Krehel says.

Krehel wants everyone to experience the excitement of watching cacti bloom, which is why he makes high-definition time-lapse videos and GIFs that capture the buds in all their glory. "The combination of spiky body with stunning flowers is just overwhelming," Krehel says. "I’m definitely a cactus lover first and a photographer second."

The Florida resident got hooked on the South American cacti in 2013 after purchasing one at his local nursery. Smitten by their showy petals, he started buying as many exotic Echinopsis species as he could afford and reading online tutorials to learn how to photograph them.

Greg Krehel

It's a tricky process to capture the unfurling flowers at just the right moment. The buds usually start doubling in size a day or two before blossoming. When Krehel suspects a plant is getting close, he sets it inside a light tent in his guest bathroom—out of service during the seven months a year the Echinopsis bloom—for a nocturnal shooting session. He positions his lens close—but not too close— to the cactus and tapes the focus ring in position so it doesn’t shift. Finally, he sets the camera to slightly underexpose the image, since the petals reflect more and more light as they appear.

Once everything is in place, Krehel sets the intervalometer to shoot at 80 images an hour. It takes 10 hours to capture the blooming process and a whopping 34 hours to catch the wilting. There can be as many 3,000 photos in a single session.

Krehel doesn't stay up all night, but a million things can go wrong while he sleeps. Sometimes, the cacti don't bloom. When they do, sometimes they bloom out of frame. But the final result is worth it, the flowers popping like fireworks in every shot. The plants' natural colors are so bright Krehel has to decrease the saturation to make sure the final image isn’t blown out. "People often suppose I’m using Photoshop to pump up the colors of these flowers, but it’s just the opposite," he says.

Krehel has photographed 60 different Echinopsis species and hybrids, but he has plenty more waiting for their photo-ops. Around 100 cacti in total line the sides of his house. Caring for them all—moving them under the eaves during rainstorms, and into the garage on cold winter nights—can be almost as time-consuming as photographing them. "My neighbors don’t know about the photography aspect, so all they see is me schlepping the cacti around all the time," he says. "I’m pretty sure they think there’s this weird cactus nutcase living in the neighborhood."

https://vimeo.com/122575482