I'd never been, and was amazed at the passion surrounding these plants. People are fanatical about orchids, which is fine. Everyone should feel passionate, or fanatical, about something (guess what I'm fanatical about).
Plants were put up for display and lit up with lights, and affixed with ribbons and claims of "Best," "Runner-up," "Honorable Mention," etc. People with macro lenses on their cameras, and soft flashes, crowded around the winning entries like they were Hollywood stars.
I came totally unprepared with black and white film loaded in the camera, intent on shooting the periphery, the people. I felt compelled to "look the part," and snap a few shots of these strange little beasts. It's odd. I don't consider them flowers at all, because hearing stories about how and why some of these plants evolved into their existence was fascinating, weird, and seemed almost willful on the part of the plant, almost devious, intelligent. That's kind of creepy, cool, but creepy.
In the end, we came home with several new housemates. They're beautiful, but they're still not flowers to me.
And now for us fanatics: images caught with a Leica M4-P, Summicron 50/2 lens, Tri-X.
