This past weekend, I made another trip to the orchid exhibit at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond, VA, in part to hone my macro-shooting skills that have atrophied during the winter months.
I have grown accustomed to photographing birds and small mammals at the far end of my telephoto range in situations in which I don’t have much time for decision-making. If I am lucky, I am able to quickly check the direction of the light and adjust my camera’s settings, but sometimes there is insufficient time for even those rudimentary checks.
When I am shooting with my macro lens, my camera is usually attached to my tripod and, if I remember to do so, I have time to think about the exposure, the settings, and the angle before the shot. More importantly, I can look at the results and take a second shot. Birds and animals rarely give me a second chance.
Here are shots of a couple of the orchids that at the exhibition. I don’t know the names of the orchids, but one of my Facebook friends told me that the red one is from the Cymbidium genus. As I was working on the images, I noticed that I photographed both of them from almost the same angle. Perhaps I liked that angle, but most likely I was desperately trying to get an uncluttered background and this view allowed me to minimize distractions.
I can tell I need to retrain my eyes a bit to look at the tiny details as I prepare for the insect and flower season. Baseball is not the only activity that requires spring training.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Nice macros. Usually the hardest thing about a flower show is all the people. I’m surprised you could find enough space for a tripod, and that someone didn’t trip over it.
Surprisingly there were not that many people (maybe because it was late on a Monday morning). The orchids were spread out over four big areas of a huge glassed in conservatory. A couple of the areas were warmer than the others and access was controlled by automatic doors
I like the fact that the colors in these pictures are not so completely blown out and saturated, which is a trend that I see a lot of these days and kinda starts to wear me out a little bit. if that makes sense..
Thanks. It’s interesting that you chose to comment on this, because one of the last tweaks I did to the shots before posting them was to tone down the saturation. Sometimes when contrast is increased and sharpness enhanced the colors get unnaturally bright. I thought the yellow was a bit too much, but didn’t like the effect when it got paler. I think the flower had a waxy texture which made it a shiny yellow. I like to keep my shots as natural as I can, but have noted the same trend that you identified.
What a nice place to take photos! You gotta’ love those bizarre orchid flower parts so contorted with exotic colors and shapes. But it does make getting everything in focus challenging.
Thanks, Sue. According to the garden’s website, the conservatory where I saw these orchids is the classic glass-domed conservatory of its type in the mid-Atlantic. As you suggested,depth of field was a huge problem when shooting macro shots of these flowers. I shot the red flower, for example, at f/16 with an exposure of 1/3 of a second (and even then I couldn’t get everything in sharp focus).