Biosphere 2

Author's Comments

The first time I drove up from Tucson and saw it through the desert scrub, I laughed out loud. There is something genuinely strange about cresting a hill in the Sonoran foothills and finding what looks like a rendering from a 1987 science fiction paperback sitting against the Catalinas. Biosphere 2 has not aged the way you might expect. The glass pyramids still read as futuristic, and the desert light does something to them that I have not seen architecture do anywhere else. Late afternoon in November is when I would send anyone. The sun drops behind the structures and the panels begin to act less like windows and more like a faceted surface, catching different angles of sky and turning the whole complex into something prismatic. You will want a longer lens for the detail work. The geometry of the panels rewards tight compositions, the way the steel framing divides the sky into triangles, the way reflections fragment and reassemble as you move three feet to the left. The wide shot is harder than it looks. The mountains behind want to dominate, and the structures can read as small if you do not work to anchor them. I have found the best wide compositions come from below and to the south, with the pyramids stacked against the Catalinas at the moment the peaks go pink and the glass is still catching the last direct light. That window is short. Maybe ten minutes. You do not need the tour to make the photograph, though the interior biomes are worth seeing once. The exterior is the real subject. Come with time, and walk the perimeter slowly before you raise the camera.

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