O is for ... Orchid

Nothing quite beats the elegant beauty of an Orchid. These plants were once a luxury, but today seem to be popular and reasonably priced houseplants - this one is guaranteed to last 28 days: a very simple bunch of flowers from the same supermarket may cost £2 or £3 and last a week!

Anyway, it makes a great replacement for the Christmas poinsettia, which has finally dropped most of its leaves, as well as provide an easy subject for the letter O in DDW's February 2014 Alphabet Challenge

For Bobsbitz59's Technique Challenge, I shot the "throat" of the orchid with a very shallow DOF as my Creative DOF offering. I set up in my hallway, which provides daylight from two aspects, and used a gold reflector to light the centre of the flower. It was then tweaked in LR5 and given it a square crop.

An alternative can be found in my blipfolio, but I preferred this one