Joseph Dougherty

Joe pulls orchids from the wreckage of a logging operation in Costa Rica. If not relocated to an hospitable site, the orchids will rot in the mud of the jungle floor.

Joseph Dougherty, formerly OrchidMania's Grants Coordinator and still the volunteer website manager, took many of the pictures featured throughout this website.

Joe is a former professional writer and photographer, and also worked for several years as a naturalist guide in Central America (that was how he got hooked on orchids).

While traveling through Costa Rica, Honduras, Ecuador, and other orchid-rich regions, Joe had ample opportunity to see orchids in the wild. He has photographed plants in both pristine and heavily altered landscapes. After several frustrating incidents of watching helplessly as large rainforest trees filled with epiphytes were felled for cattle pasture, or to expand banana plantations, Joe got interested in orchid salvage efforts. He has participated in several local rescue operations in Costa Rica.

Joe started volunteering for OrchidMania in 1996 while living in Oakland, CA and remains active in habitat conservation efforts. Joe maintains the OrchidMania FAQ page, where replies to the most common questions received through this site are posted for everyone to read. He now resides (with his wife and son) in Ann Arbor, MI, where he is a medical student at the University of Michigan.

Joe uses Nikon equipment exclusively for his orchid photography. Most of the images shown on this website are made with a Nikon Coolpix 990, Coolpix 5000, or a Nikon D1x, utilizing the Nikkor 105mm macro lenses and a combination of lighting techniques. Joe's collection of orchid images consists of several thousand species, plus a smaller assortment of awarded hybrids. Most of his image collection is still in 35mm slides, but he now shoots exclusively digital images.

Joe grabs a limit (back when it was still four) of abalone.

In addition to orchids and photography, Joe is an avid scuba diver (NAUI instructor and IANTD mixed gas certified) and freediver. He uses a Nikonos V for his underwater photography.

You can see more of Joe's photography on the UC Berkeley CalPhotos pages, including a sample of his early orchid photographs.

Joe also contributes many species photographs to Jay Phal's Internet Orchid Species Encyclopedia and is currently building up OrchidMania's Species of the World website, as well.

Lastly, divisions of Joe's excess orchid plants are occassionally posted for sale on eBay. Check to see if Joe currently has any plants for sale.

Other OrchidMania photographers:

• Take a look at Eric Hunt's excellent orchid images, including a current list of what's in bloom at the OrchidMania greenhouse.
• Gwen Watson, part of the first generation of OM volunteers and OrchidMania's former Director of Education, is an excellent photographer and many of her images are featured on the White Oak Orchids website.

This site is constructed with Adobe Photoshop
and Nikon digital cameras, such as the D1x and Coolpix 5000.

You will enjoy this site best (i.e. the photographs will look better) if your monitor is properly calibrated. If images seem too dark (most common for PC users) or too light and faded (more common for Mac users), it may be due to the variances in the native configurations of your system and monitor. Visit this site (external link) for information about CRT monitor displays and instructions to help you calibrate your monitor.