Ernest Shin has always had a keen interest in plants and horticulture since childhood, and encountered Neofinetia for the first time during a trip to Korea to visit family back in 2003. Seeing the stone mounted miniature in bloom with its fragrant pure white flowers made an impression on him that followed him throughout the rest of highschool and college. 

Soon after college, in 2010, having found a home with space to grow, he dove straight into the world of Neos, gradually amassing a collection of over 100 Neos, and using his familiarity with the Korean and Japanese languages to access knowledge and research scarcely available to English only audiences. 

In 2015, he joined the administrator group of the Facebook group for Neos, helping to eventually bring much of the knowledge from Japan and Korea to a more accessible place for those unable to overcome the language barrier. Since then he has gained a bit of a reputation of being an expert on Neos in the English speaking orchid world, though he attributes most of that knowledge simply to being able to read the extensive information available in Japanese and Korean.