The Huntington Gardens Conservatory

Opened in October 2005, The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science is the cornerstone of a new, multi-phased botanical education center at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. This striking new building adds a public exhibition and interactive learning space to the existing facilities for botanical research. Read more at the Huntington website.

The Huntington is one of the most beautiful places in the Los Angeles area, in my opinion. I would often ride my bike here years ago when I lived in South Pasadena. I have not been here in a while, so I was quite surprised to find a lot of expansion and growth. In addition to the Conservatory and an adjacent Children's Garden, there is also work started on a massive Chinese garden.

As usual, I set out on the WWP weekend without a clue what I was going to take. When I walked into the rainforest room at the Conservatory, it seemed like the perfect thing. However, large mist jets positioned all around the ceiling would blast clouds and rain out into the forest at random intervals, This made for a real challenge, as I wiped and cleaned the lens constantly, and I had to time my shots between blasts. You can see the jets spraying if you zoom into the ceiling. This rainforest is only 6 months old, so it has yet to grow into the lush jungle it will be in a few years.

USA-Canada / USA-California

Lat: 34° 7' 43.7" N
Long: 119° 7' 51.57" W

Elevation: 679

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Minolta Dimage Z1 (3.2 megapixel camera with a 28mm equivalent wide angle adaptor) sitting on a custom made pano bracket which sits on my new tripod. PTgui 5 used for stitching, Photoshop 6 used for tweaking, CubicConverter used for conversion to QTVR.