Denver Botanic Gardens

Author's Comments

Twenty-four acres in the middle of a city is not much, and yet I find myself losing whole mornings here without quite knowing where they went. The Gardens reward a slower kind of looking. The wide shot is rarely the photograph. What I come for is closer in: a single water lily holding the reflection of a cloud, the curve of a leaf in the tropical conservatory still beaded from the morning misters, the quiet geometry of the Japanese Garden when the light is soft and the surface of the pond goes glassy. Overcast is not a problem here. It is the gift. Direct Colorado sun in July is brutal on petals and even more brutal on a camera trying to hold detail in white blooms. A flat gray sky turns the place into a softbox, and the colors deepen. I have made some of my best garden frames on days when other photographers stayed home. Go early. The timed-entry system means the first slot of the morning is reliably the thinnest, and the Monet Pool before nine is a different place than the Monet Pool at noon. Bring a macro lens if you have one. Bring patience if you do not. The water lilies open through the morning and close again by mid-afternoon, so the window is real. The Boettcher Conservatory is the cold-weather answer. In February when the rest of the city is brown and frozen, the conservatory holds its own private summer, and the condensation on the glass at opening time is its own kind of subject. This is a place that asks you to work small and look carefully. Almost everything worth photographing here is.

Gallery