When we were in the Twin Cities of Minnesota this past summer, I made it a point to go to the Como Conservatory. This is a fabulous place, with gorgeous gardens outdoors and a large indoor conservatory full of exotic tropical plants and flowers. The conservatory consists of several microclimates which support species such as orchids and a wide array of unusual and ornamental plants.
Our first stop was the Fern Room which has more than 100 examples of these prehistoric plants that are sometimes referred to as “living dinosaurs.” You would have to be an expert to identify all the different ferns. But suffice it to say that in this exhibit you will be under tall tree-fern canopies while peering down at tiny sprouting spirals. In these photos, I concentrated on young developing ferns.
Select any photo to enlarge it.
We next visited the Orchid House. Orchids also date back to prehistoric eras, having developed about 100 million years ago. There 28,000 species and they appear in myriad colors, shapes and sizes.
In the gallery below, I have included a few of my favorites from the Orchid House, as well as some other tropical flowers in the conservatory.
The photo of the spider orchid is a focus stack, combining eight shots with different focus points to make one close-up in focus throughout. A closeup like this would not be entirely in focus without this technique.
After exploring the indoor conservatory, we went outdoors to the fabulous water lily and lotus garden which consists of three large pools. We were in luck–everything was in full bloom and I had a great time photographing these beauties.
And finally, in a special indoor exhibit, I encountered this guy wandering around just looking for someone to take his portrait.
For all of these photos, I used my Olympus EM-1 Mark III with the Olympus 40-150 f4-5.6 zoom lens. This is an amazing lens for the price and it has just the right reach for the work I was doing. I hope you enjoy the gallery.
