Habenaria macroceratitis
 

I have updated by blog with images from a recent trip to photograph the king of all the NA Habenarias with two-inch wide flowers and six-inch long nectaries. Here is one photo as a teaser:

http://www.flnativeorchids.com/image...rger_spike.jpg

The rest of the photos can be seen on my blog:

Florida's Native Orchids

Enjoy!
---Prem

Really interesting. Love that shot with the spider!

Very nice. Photos are just amazing !

One question, How did you take the photo with the black background? I need to learn how to do that.

The black background came from my black camera bag. My son, Tim, had to stand in such a way as to shadow the bag without shadowing the plant.

Still, the bag was slightly visible in the shot...this is where a good photo editing program like Photoshop, Corel PhotoPaint, etc. comes into play. I can adjust the brightness levels to knock the near-black shades to black and bring up the bright levels to near-white. Here was the original, undoctored shot from my camera:

http://www.flnativeorchids.com/image.../photo_raw.jpg

As you can see, there was another spike intruding into the corner, a visible camera bag (complete with spot of red-orange lint), and flowers that were only medium-bright...I digitally fixed that to get a better-looking photo.

---Prem

Great job! I love the shot. I think I might start taking a black trash bag with me when shooting native orchids. Thanks for the idea.

Great idea with the bag.

My hubby used to hold up a black, or even dark blue fleese sweater for me. Most times even the dark blue ones came out as a good plain black... only in bright light did the texture show up.

We now have a big black blackout blind we use which works pretty well.

neatly done photo.:) you've done a great job!