"Queen of the Night"/night blooming cereus

I was commissioned to paint the Queen of the Night cactus for Vanishing Circles Exhibition in connection with the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. Living in Wisconsin, I needed to take source material photographs of this Sonoran Desert flower when it bloomed so arranged to fly to Tucson near the blooming time. When the timing is right the flower blooms from 11:00pm to around 7:00am for a few days, but it had not budded enough to be close to blooming when I arrived in Arizona from Wisconsin. I was alerted by the museum's security guard the third night there that the bud was opening around 11:00ish, so put on boots to guard against rattlesnakes, took my camera, and along with a friend to hold a light for me, set out for the plant's location to get the photo reference. The planned lighting looked fake, so I resorted to just taking multiple shots with my new camera set on a setting I'd never heard of (nightshot) and by divine intervention got exactly the lighting I needed. This framed archival print is framed with a cream double matte with a cherry frame.