Balboa Park Botanical Building

Author's Comments

The lath is the photograph. People come for the lily pond and the symmetry of the reflection, and that image is real and worth making, but the building itself is doing something more interesting once you step inside. The curved wooden ribs filter the San Diego sun into thousands of narrow stripes that fall across the leaves and the gravel paths and your own hands as you work the camera. It is a structure built to grow plants, and it grows light too. Morning is the only time I will shoot here. By eleven the harder light flattens the interior and the pond out front goes glassy in the wrong way, picking up sky glare instead of reflection. But around eight, with the sun still low and coming in from the east, the lath throws long diagonal shadows across the front facade and the pond holds the building in still water. Tuesday or Wednesday if you can manage it. The weekend crowds gather on the bench at the south end of the pond and stay there. Inside, work close. The orchids and the bromeliads are the obvious subjects, but I find myself more drawn to the way the shadow pattern lands on a single broad leaf, or on the back of someone pausing to read a placard. It is a portrait studio with the lighting already set. Bring something fast if you have it. The interior is darker than it looks, and the contrast between the lit stripes and the shaded ones is where the photograph lives.

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