Marilyn's Orchid Tradition

It’s important to spend some time with your subject in order to truly get to know it. A close friend with an iPhone can obtain a better photo than a stranger with professional gear, simply because they’ve spent more time with the subject and know “the look”. 

In landscape photography it is called a “sense of place”.  Instinctually if you’ve seen it before, chances are it will repeat. That goes for winks and smiles, as well as highlights and shadows and the point on the horizon where the moon may rise.

Marilyn’s orchid garden originated as house plants that each spring gained freedom from their pots as orchids in her trees. A 20 year tradition, her babies have flourished, and she can probably recall the friend or occasion which pertains to a particular orchid’s history. They bring her joy.

As with the orchid bloom, you may have been attracted by it’s graceful droop or showy color, but when you peer behind, you see the stem, the “backbone” of the beauty.

Sometimes just one frame is not enough to tell the story. Roots, trunk(s), bark, leaves, and crown compose the tree; as do its scars and woodpecker holes, twists, turns and tangles of it’s branches and it’s flowers and fruit.  You can view it from yards away, or you can come close and give it a hug.

Humans or nature.

Both benefit from a history together.