Orchid Daze: A Walk Through Color and Wonder at the Atlanta Botanical Garden

Dave and I visited the Orchid Daze: Living Canvas exhibition at the Atlanta Botanical Garden this weekend, and I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite place in Atlanta.

There’s something about being surrounded by that much living, breathing beauty that feels almost otherworldly. The sheer variety of nature is always astonishing, but it’s never more apparent than it is there — especially inside the orchid house.

Some orchids are as big as my hand. Others are no larger than a pinhead. Their patterns are wild and intricate: stripes, spots, gradients, velvety centers, delicate veining. Every color of the rainbow shows up somewhere. Some even have names like “Tiny Dancer,” and when you look closely, the interior of the bloom really does resemble a dancer — arms outstretched, skirts billowing mid-twirl.

It’s a riot of color and shape and scent. Sensory overload in the very best way.

I found myself photographing the ones that caught my eye — or maybe the ones that wanted me to take their picture. (I do think certain flowers volunteer.)

I love photographing flowers for all of those visual reasons — the color, the variety, the drama — but also because they invite play. Flowers are the perfect subjects for experimenting with depth of field. You can keep everything crisp on a single plane, or shift your angle so that just one delicate edge is razor sharp while the rest dissolves into softness. With the slightest adjustment, the entire mood changes. What begins as a simple bloom becomes a study in composition — line and curve, balance and tension, negative space and restraint.

And then there’s the anticipation.

One of my favorite parts of photography happens later. You take the images, review them quickly on the small screen, glimpse them through the viewfinder — but you don’t really see them yet. The real reveal comes at home, on the computer. When you zoom in. When you rotate them upright (because I almost never photograph a flower straight up and down). When you discover whether you captured what you felt.

Did you catch the perfect sliver of focus?

Did the light hit just right?

Did the image translate the wonder you felt standing there?

Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s almost. But that moment of discovery — that quiet unveiling — is part of what keeps me coming back to my camera.

Nature does the creating. I just get the privilege of noticing.