For the past few years, Longwood Gardens has created some amazing miniature landscapes as part of their annual Orchid Extravaganza. In 2016, they designed a tropical clearing full of orchids. What they did was create streams, and meadows and fill them with orchid plants in various parts of the conservatory. It gave photographers a great chance to photograph some of the orchids in a semi-natural setting rather than just in a pot against a dark wall. So while the mini-landscapes weren’t realistic – they were great fun to photograph.
Here are a few of my photos from the tropical clearing.
I’m always amazed at how many different colors, shapes and textures of orchids I see at local botanical gardens. I probably shouldn’t be – since there are over 27,000 species of orchids. I’ve created a new video for you with some of my favorite photographs of orchids. The photos are accompanied by Mozart’s Piano Sonata No 16 Allegro.
I hope you enjoy my video. Please feel free to share it with your friends
For the past few years, Longwood Gardens has created some amazing miniature landscapes as part of their annual Orchid Extravaganza. In 2015, they designed an orchid meadow. What they did was create streams, and meadows and fill them with orchid plants in various parts of the conservatory. It gave photographers a great chance to photograph some of the orchids in a semi-natural setting rather than just in a pot against a dark wall. So while the mini-landscapes weren’t realistic – they were great fun to photograph.
Here are a few of my photos from the 2015 Orchid Meadow at Longwood Gardens
I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing these photos from the Orchid Meadow. If you’d like to join me in photographing at Longwood for their orchid show next year, become a member of the DC Flower Safari. We usually visit Longwood Gardens a few times a year – including for the Orchid Extravaganza.
Join the DC Flower Safari Meetup Group: http://www.meetup.com/DC-Area-Flower-Safari/
Last week I spent a marvelous morning photographing at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond, Virginia. I don’t get to Lewis Ginter as often as I’d like to (something about all the traffic on I-95) but when I do – I always have a wonderful time. Spring flowers bloom at least a week earlier in Richmond than they do in DC – so a trip in early March means I get to see and photograph spring flowers a little earlier than I would if I just stayed at home.
Here are a few of my photos from Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens from last week
Now that spring seems to finally be arriving in the DC area – I’ll be out photographing locally more often. And I’ll admit – I’m ready to be out photographing on a more regular basis 🙂
Over the years I’ve photographed a number of orchids labeled as Dendrobium Orchids. Since I can’t tell one orchid from the next – I’m assuming that they were labelled correctly at the botanical gardens I photographed them at. If anyone can positively identify any of these orchids as being something other than a dendrobium orchid – I’d appreciate it if you could let me know.
I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing these dendrobium orchid photos – I’m sure I’ll be posting more orchid photos soon as I work my way through my backlog of unedited photos.
Pink Lady’s Slippers (Cypripedium acaule) are one of my favorite spring wildflowers. For the longest time, I’d only see them one or two at a time, often not in great shape. And then one year while I was photographing in the Smokies, I found a spot that at the time had maybe 15 lady’s slippers. I’ve gone back to that same spot several times now over the years – and am always thrilled to find the patch of lady’s slippers is thriving. This year I counted at least 30 pink lady’s slippers in the area – which meant I had a great time photographing them.
Here are a few of my favorite photos of the pink lady’s slippers from this spring.
There used to be a few yellow lady’s slippers nearby – but this year there was only one. Based on the damage in the area – I suspect there had been more yellow lady’s slippers earlier this year but that someone had dug one or more of them up and removed them from the park.
The lady’s slippers generally bloom in mid-late April – so hopefully they will be in bloom for my Spring in the Smokies workshop next year. If they are in bloom, this is one of the spots I’m planning on taking people during the workshop.
