To love beauty is to see light. Victor Hugo

This is one of those times that I wish that I could easily change the background color of an individual entry because this particular series of images is best suited for a black background.

The setting – The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.

The other artist, well, other than nature: Dale Chihuly

The exhibit: Chihuly in the Garden

This is our second trip to see Chihuly in the Garden, the first time was back in 2008 and until today, I’ve never gotten around to posting a single image of the exhibit.

Back in 08 we happened to see it twice, the first time by day during our Thanksgiving trip. The second time we managed a night visit when we went back at Christmastime. And this year, although we had thought to try and see both, we ended up heading on over when the zoo lights were packed to the point of absurdity.

The sign at the entrance to the gardens said SOLD OUT.  I wanted to turn around and call it a night and head up to the Hyatt and listen to some music, but my daughter and son in law had already decided to go for it in spite of the warnings.  Thankfully, there were people who had reserved tickets and called to cancel.  We were told by friends we ran into at the exhibit that they had been sold out since November. Happily, we all got in and my wife and I were treated by a guest that traveled to Phoenix with us.

Looking back at both sets of images, day and night, I’ve decided that I am going to make another attempt to visit the gardens in a couple of weeks when we go back for my granddaughter’s third birthday party.

While I love the night lights on the blown glass, there is also something to be said for those deep blue skies and the play of sunlight.

Fortunately we had been told that the exhibit was in Phoenix before we left on the trip so I threw one of my tripods into the car, but ended up using my Cannon hiking camera instead of the big Nikon and all of its lenses.  It turns out that it was cold and crowded so I was happy to have simple and fast in the realm of camera gear.

I played with the white balance but, as usual, red is very difficult for just about any camera to capture well.  I think that I could probably spend a whole lot of time learning about masks and such in Photoshop to get this image to look more like the deep reds that we saw that night, but I just don’t have the time.

That’s all I’m going to post of the contrasts between day and night.

We were told that the exhibit was not nearly as expansive as what we saw in ’08, but I was quite happy with what we saw.  Granted, some of the time we spent at the musical exhibits left us less time to wander the gardens, but the whole effect was well worth the effort.

If you get a chance to see a collection of Glass by Chihuly, go see it.  It’s worth the effort, whether by night or day.