‘This cactus looks as if it’s preaching’: Joseph Cyr’s greatest telephone image | Images

Joseph Cyr works as a language instructor at an American secondary college. He was born in South Korea, and spent his childhood residing throughout Germany and the US, in Georgia and Arizona. “As an adult I have lived in Seattle, Paris and Nicaragua before moving back to Arizona,” he says. “I took this in Saguaro national park, on the edge of Tucson. It’s about an hour north of the US-Mexico border.”

It was a college vacation, so Cyr was doing a path run when he took this picture. His route was quiet; he noticed only some folks on horseback and this saguaro cactus. The largest cactus within the US, it grows solely within the Sonoran Desert, the place the Saguaro nationwide park lies.

“They can grow as tall as a six-storey building and live for more than two centuries,” Cyr says. “Their first arms don’t usually appear until the plant is 70 years old.” This specific instance has a uncommon mutation: “According to the national park service, among the estimated 2m saguaros in the park, only about 75 crested saguaros have been found,” Cyr provides. “One can’t help but anthropomorphise these plants – their silhouettes often look like people with outstretched arms. This cactus looks as if it’s proclaiming, preaching, pointing outward and upward.”

The scale of the cactus is awe-inspiring, Cyr says, however additionally it is testomony to the truth that nature is usually a supply of humour. “Not everything is ‘sublime and majestic’. It can be awkward and whimsical, but still leave us with our jaws open.”