Chihuly Garden and Glass

Author's Comments

There is a problem unique to photographing Chihuly, which is that the work is already doing so much. The colors are saturated, the forms are theatrical, the lighting inside the galleries is engineered for drama. Point a camera at any of it and you will get something that looks like a photograph of Chihuly. Whether you have made an actual photograph is a different question. I have been three times now and I think the answer lies in restraint. The Glasshouse is the obvious centerpiece, that hundred-foot suspended ribbon of orange and yellow under the steel canopy, and on a clear afternoon when the Space Needle rises behind it through the glass, the composition is almost too easy. Take that one. Then put the wide lens away. The garden is where the work gets interesting. The blue spears emerging from black mondo grass, the cobalt reeds against fern, the way a sphere of glass holds a bent reflection of a Douglas fir overhead. After rain is when this place reveals itself. The glass goes wet and the colors deepen and the plantings around them stop being a backdrop and start being a collaborator. Mid-afternoon in fall, when the light is lower and the maples are turning, is when I have made my best frames here. Inside, the no-tripod rule is real and the crowds in the Persian Ceiling room will test your patience. Wait them out. There are pockets of thirty seconds where the room empties and the light coming down through all that color falls on an empty floor, and that is the photograph. A weekday afternoon will give you more of those pockets than a weekend ever will.

Gallery