Museum of Glass

Author's Comments

The cone is the photograph. I have tried it from a dozen angles and the one that holds up is from the east at blue hour, when the sky has gone that particular cobalt that lasts maybe twenty minutes and the interior of the hot shop glows amber through the steel. The contrast does the work for you. Warm light bleeding out of cool architecture, the Thea Foss Waterway picking up both colors in the foreground, the whole structure reading less like a museum and more like something industrial and alive. The Bridge of Glass is the other piece, and I would argue it rewards a second visit rather than a combined one. The Chihuly installations overhead are best in daylight when the color actually transmits through, and the Venetian wall is a different photograph entirely. Detail work. Closer lens. Patience for the moment when no one is walking through your frame, which on a Tuesday morning in February is most moments. What I like about Tacoma is that it does not perform for you. The museum sits on a working waterway, and the photographs that feel most honest to me include some of that context - a crane in the distance, the freeway underneath the bridge, the city behind. Pure architectural studies are available here, but the place is more interesting when you let it be what it actually is. Blue hour in winter comes early, around four thirty in December. That is the easiest time to shoot this without committing your whole evening. Bring a tripod. The exposures you want are longer than you think.

Gallery