I was mocked by another person photographing the orchids for having way too big a lens to photograph flowers, but a longer focal length better isolates the flower from the background, better blurs the background and that was what I was trying to achieve, get photos with as smooth and out of focus a background as possible, so I used my big lens. It took a while to find the right candidates among the hundreds of orchids because most were close together, surrounded by grass or too far from the boardwalk to isolate against a desired background. The second photo was shot against the backdrop of a tree trunk for a uniform background of a different color and texture. These two are the best out of many failures and awkward stretches of muscles!