Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania

Back in March of this year, we took a trip down to Longwood Gardens near Kennett Square PA. This garden is over 1,050 acres and contains over 11,000 different varieties of plants — a staggering figure! While it was a bit cold to walk around the outdoor gardens, we visited a enormous orchid display in the Conservatory on site. The Conservatory is a mere 4.5 acres — small compared to the rest of the gardens, but still worthy of an entire afternoon of wandering and photographing!

Interior of the Conservatory
Interior of the Conservatory
NIKON D200 @ 50mm — 1/90 sec , ƒ/ 6.3 , ISO 100
Indoor Trees and More Lawn
Indoor Trees and More Lawn
NIKON D200 @ 50mm — 1/40 sec , ƒ/ 8 , ISO 100

These were taken just inside one of the entrances (the main entrance I believe) and I was truly impressed with the well manicured lawn — indoors!

Since this was an orchid display, the better part of the conservatory was filled with hundreds of different varieties of orchid. I have no idea how they switch from the orchid display to their next headline display. Perhaps it just follows the seasons. Regardless, some of these flowers were truly amazing!

I had just acquired the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 prime lens at the time and I was spending a good deal of my efforts experimenting with the very shallow depth of field.

Unknown Orchid
Unknown Orchid
NIKON D200 @ 50mm — 1/1250 sec , ƒ/ 1.6 , ISO 100

I’m really kicking myself for not being more dillagent writing down names for all these plants. I got so caught up in taking the photos, I just never thought about it.

White and Pink
White and Pink
NIKON D200 @ 50mm — 1/640 sec , ƒ/ 1.8 , ISO 100
Water Droplet on Orchid
Water Droplet on Orchid
NIKON D200 @ 50mm — 1/60 sec , ƒ/ 2.5 , ISO 100
Bright Orange
Bright Orange
NIKON D200 @ 50mm — 1/1250 sec , ƒ/ 2.8 , ISO 100

While the orange looks almost too bright, I’m really not exaggerating the colors — they were that vivid in person too! In fact, after a whole day of walking around inside, leaving to the somewhat somber march landscape seemed almost drab in comparison.

Unfortunately, being that this was one of my first tries at using the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, many of the photos are either shot with too large an aperture or simply not all that they could have been. However, I still think I got a pretty good selection — in fact, this is only the first chunk of the images I took that day. I’ll probably have to write a part 2 with more images.