Cattleya skinneri alba 'Linda Vista' CCM/AOS, award slide from the Southland Orchid Show, April 18, 1980, slide processed May, 1980. This is the original image that was later altered by unknown hands to generate the notorious award photo that has found its way into the current AOS awards database, OrchidPro. The necessary sequence of events is alarming. Sometime before 2006, when the award slides were being digitized to produce the early generations of the awards database, first as a database of images, and then merged with the awards data, someone undertook very intricate edits starting from this image. Undoubtedly using an early version of Adobe PhotoShop, sections of the diagonal wood paneling below the plant were copied and pasted in such a way that the white table top was entirely obliterated. These cloned sections are most easily detected by looking for repeats in the wood grain, and misplaced or unexplained shadows. Then, the individual flowers were tinted sky blue, but for the most part leaving the centers of the lips untouched. Clearly, these operations must have taken many hours to complete, by someone possessed with the apparently widely-felt urge to create "blue" orchids! Who did it, and why the fraud was not detected until we spotted it a couple years ago, remain unexplained. See below for the altered image as it appears in OrchidPro.
© 1980 AOS