Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Author's Comments

I do not usually love photographing in places that charge admission and draw crowds, and I will admit that my first visit to the Desert Museum was reluctant. I left convinced. The grounds are not a zoo in the way you might be picturing. The enclosures bleed into the actual desert, and on a March morning before the heat arrives, with the ocotillo just beginning to flame red at the tips, the line between exhibit and landscape becomes genuinely difficult to find. The raptor free-flight is the photograph everyone comes for and it deserves its reputation. A Harris's hawk passing two feet above your head, wings full out against the Tucson Mountains behind, is not a picture you make anywhere else easily. Bring the long lens. Bring a faster shutter than you think you need. The birds move with a kind of casual authority that does not wait for you to focus. But the show is twice a day, and the rest of the morning is where I spend most of my time. The hummingbird aviary in soft overcast light. The agave portraits in the botanical gardens, where the geometry of a single century plant can hold a frame entirely on its own. The javelinas moving through dappled shadow when the sun is still low. Come in February or early March. Be at the gate when it opens. By eleven the light has gone hard and the animals have gone quiet, and you will wish you had started earlier.

Gallery