There are quite a few wildflowers around Michigan that I would consider ‘rare finds,’ such as these showy lady slipper orchids that I shot this weekend.   In fact, it is even rarer that you would happen to stumble upon these by yourself just ‘walking in the woods.’   A friend took me to one location with quite a few of these around, but it was somewhere not many would venture into to look for “flower pictures.”   They perhaps can be found more commonly in Northern Michigan, but around here in Southeast Michigan, wild orchids are just not in every woodlot.

So once you are in this ‘hard to get to’ spot, you want to make the most of it.  After shooting some documentary-type portraits of these beautiful flowers, I was looking for something different.   We were fortunate enough to discover some unique situations of backlighting, doubled-up orchids, and some other unique settings – so it paid off not to allocate all of your time on the first bloom you saw.    I still find these flowers hard to do a lot of unique compositions with, they either just don’t lend themselves to a lot of creative portrayals, or my creative juices just weren’t flowing enough.   I do happen to like unopened buds of flowers though, I think sometimes they can be as nice as the flower in full bloom from a graphical standpoint.   So here is a Showy in ‘partial bloom’ – but I liked the way the leaves and the bud formed a graphical arrangement.