When I want to buy Ann flowers, I buy sunflowers. Ann loves sunflowers (if you want, go to the bottom of the page and enter “sunflower” and then check out the “Flowers for Ann” post I did while I was in Iraq, or of course you could just click here).

But when we buy flowers together, we more often than not buy orchids. Ann loves orchids too. Who doesn’t. Usually Ann prefers the more exotic looking orchids, but sometimes you just have to buy a “plain” orchid because it’s simply beautiful.

The nice thing about orchids is, if you’re really nice to them and really patient, they sometimes come back and blossom for you again, much much later. Well guess what started budding early this summer? After a few weeks, and a few buds opening up, I had to grab a camera and take a picture.

But really, a picture like that doesn’t really do the orchid justice. So last weekend Ann and I made an impromptu home studio. We have a nice grey-green backdrop paint in our kitchen area to use as a background, and a large skylight to provide nice diffuse lighting (if you get it before the sun gets too high). All we had to do was move things around a bit (to find a wide enough wall area) and we were off to the races.

It was pretty impressive because we didn’t use any supplemental lighting. No lights, no reflectors, just an orchid off-set a bit from the skylight and a bare wall.

We also discovered a nice thing about the newer generation multi-megapixel sensors - you can grab a normal lens and, after the fact, crop into the image like a madman and come out with a decent image.

Now, these super crops couldn’t really be printed large, but for enjoying on a computer monitor, iPad or phone, they’re just fine. You can still easily enjoy their beauty