Another beautiful evening so I travelled over to a site near York to shoot some green-winged orchids (Anacamptis morio) growing on the flood plane of the River Derwent. Green-winged orchids are quite scarce and I’ve only ever photographed them once before at a site in Lincolnshire but that was back in the days of film so it was nice to get up to date with some high quality digital files. As always, I’ve opted for a low viewpoint, large focal length and wide aperture to get the nice out of focus backgrounds in an attempt to make the plant stand out. It’s always a trade-off between the soft backgrounds and how much plant is in focus as the image doesn’t work if not enough of the plant is sharp. In these two images you can clearly see the one on the right has more depth of field as the grasses in the background are starting to intrude a tad.
.jpg "Green-winged orchid (Anacamptis morio)")
Green-winged orchids come in a variety of shades from pale pink to deep purple and on the pale pink flower pictured below, the ‘green wings’ are clearly visible on the flowers as wing-shaped hoods with prominent green lines above each flower.
.jpg "green-winged orchid near York")
