I blame my old chum Clive Jones for igniting my interest in British wild orchids and we have had many holidays together with our respective good ladies savouring the delights of British wildlife in general, including several very cold February weeks on the north Norfolk coast. I further blame Clive for introducing me to Flickr: he has taken to trapping and photographing moths and his excellent photos can be found here: www.flickr.com/photos/149980226@N06/albums/with/721576836...

Given the bewildering similarities of different species, particularly Dactylorhiza, and the wide variations within species, I would not have known where to start without the help of Anne and Simon Harrap's “Orchids of Britain & Ireland”, which has served me faithfully. I have also had tremendous help from some stalwart orchidologists, notably Steve Povey (Dorts of WAB fame), Alan Smith (Heakl) and Mike Waller (formerly Young Hunter, now Leptochila), who have always been ready to offer advice when I’ve asked, thanks chaps. Latterly I’ve also caught up again with Leif Bersweden, whose delightful book, here, shortbooks.co.uk/book/the-orchid-hunter is a must for anyone with any interest in what we poor orchidophiles are all about. How I wish I’d been so interested as young as Mike and Leif, rather than waiting till I was in my 60’s to develop a proper interest.

These photographs are not intended to be artistic representations, rather a record of the orchids we have seen and the background against which they grow, hopefully photographed in a way that shows the plants as the observer would see them himself. That’s not always easy as our eyes tend to make far more allowances than do camera lenses and digital sensors, so getting sufficient depth of field can involve all sorts of skullduggery, the most valuable perhaps being focus-stacking, that is taking a series of photographs at different planes of focus and combining them using software, I use Helicon, Clive uses Zerene for his moths. The trouble is the plant is inclined to move in the slightest breeze so often the ‘stack’ of photos is ruined and impossible to use. I’ve been using focus-stacking for only a couple of years, and not by any means on every subject, but notwithstanding changes in technique I hope improvements can be seen from the earliest photos to the more recent ones. Next year I’ll try and concentrate on quality not quantity of images, but you still have to kiss a few frogs to find a princess!

Sadly, my other half, Sue, died on Easter Sunday 2018 and I shall now have to hunt for orchids on my own. I don’t imagine I’ll be quite so enthusiastic without Sue’s unfailing support but I’ll try and stick at it.