Fall-blooming blc. in bloom
 

Blc. Miya's Glow x blc. Helen Pastushin, a fragrant clone bought from Orchids by Hausermann in the early 1990s, in bloom right now. An interloper entered the field of view just as I snapped the photo.

http://flytrapranch.com/photos/album...in_11-2009.jpg

That's a beautiful flower and an AMAZING photo!!! Nice job on both accounts!

That is a LOVELY shot! Such perfect timing, as well. Very, very impressive flower and photo

That is a gorgous shot with the bee in flight and that cattleya shows dowiana in the lip. They are both gorgeous!!! Congrats !!!

Beautiful!!

I agree...great shot, great photo and gorgeous blooms!

That's a prize winning photo for sure. :winner:

Sheridan :waving

Lovely color and a great shot.

Wow, that is such a fantastic shot!

That is so excellent!!! Gorgeous catt :D

wow, work of art

Thank you everyone for your comments.

The day I took the photo was a perfect day to do so. There was a high, even cloud cover that diffused the sunlight, eliminating glare and bringing out the parts of the flowers that would normally have been somewhat shaded. But the light was a very bright midday light, allowing me to use an extremely fast shutter speed of 1/3200 of a second, three times as fast as necessary to freeze splashing water, for example. This allowed me to capture the wings of the bee (which I had noticed buzzing around the fragrant blossoms) in mid stroke, even though I had no idea whether I would actually capture the bee in one of the photos or not.

As luck would have it, not only did the bee appear at a great spot in the composition of the photo, but it also happened to fly directly into the narrow focal plane at the precise instant I took the photo. That kind of serendipitous occurrence makes one smile. :-)