London and Lisbon
Twenty minutes after the mist
The palm houses in Glasshouse were all made in the same short window each morning. Here is how I found it.
Every big glasshouse runs a misting system, usually early in the morning before visitors arrive. For about twenty minutes afterwards the air is full of fine water, and the light coming through the glass turns soft and slightly green.
Working with the gardeners
None of the pictures would exist without the people who run the houses. In London I came in with the morning shift for two weeks. In Lisbon the head gardener let me set up on the gallery walkway, which is closed to the public, as long as I left before the doors opened.
I used a Pentax 67 on a tripod and Portra 160, with exposures around a quarter of a second. The mist moves, so I took three or four frames of each view and chose later.
A note on condensation
Bring the camera in cold and every lens fogs for ten minutes. I kept the kit in a bag in the warm entrance hall overnight, which solved it.