So I was down at the Botanic Garden, which just recently got its UNESCO world heritage site status (yawn.), and the place was filled with orchids. Literally bursting with one single family of flowers, no exaggeration. Well I was there shortly after Singapore’s National Day so no surprise how the place was decked out to celebrate both occasions, the overrated UNESCO status and the island’s golden jubilee. Because National Parks has so kindly graced local residents with free admission to what is usually the paid section of the gardens, the place was packed with people.
The weather was crappy, as it has been lately. Freak monsoon-like rains flushed the island intermittently for weeks and the day I was there was no different. It was hard to enjoy myself and get into my zone to focus on the flowers with people bugging me to just snap and go. I am notorious for my slow deliberate concentration, but I make up for it in quality of my shots. There are plenty of people there shooting with their mobile phones and tablets, trigger happy snap zappy. I do wonder what happens to those pictures thereafter? Posted on Facebook, Instagram and the likes?
This picture was taken after a terrible torrential downpour that left me stuck under a shelter for 30 minutes at the National Orchid Garden within the Botanic Garden. I like how the the rain actually cleared off quite a bit of the crowd. The orchid featured is a Cattleya hybrid. Description stops at just the name, of which I’m lucky this one is identified (plenty of exotic orchids go unidentified here. Such a bummer!). Some sleuthing online led me to discover that this particular genus of orchids originated in Brazil. If you may be wondering, the genus has nothing to do with cattle. It was named after William Cattley who successfully bloomed the plant in Glasgow, plenty miles away from Brazil. The flowers are pretty big, just marginally smaller than my palms. The hues of the orchids and the rain droplets glistening off the petals really compliment each other very well. Sometimes I do wonder offer if the gardens were to offer some of these exotic orchids for sale, would they be sold out quickly?
Picture taken with my Nikon D800 and the Zeiss Makro-Planar 100mm f/2.