Gardens By The Bay

The Supertree Grove at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, with Marina Bay Sands rising behind it, photographed at blue hour after sunset. I took this from the walkway area inside the grove, looking up from close to the base of the trees as the lights came on.

What I liked most about this scene was the contrast between the planted vertical gardens and the hard lines of the hotel in the background. The glowing pink and purple lighting gave the Supertrees a very artificial look, but the vegetation climbing the trunks kept the scene grounded at the same time. From this angle, the wide tops spread out across the frame and made the whole place feel even larger than it already does in person.

Marina Bay Sands sits almost perfectly between the structures, which helped tie the composition together without taking attention away from the main subject. I waited until the sky had just enough color left in it to separate the outlines of the metal branches from the background. If I had shot it later, the sky would have gone flat and dark, and a lot of that structure would have disappeared.

I used a wide lens here because I was standing fairly close and wanted to keep the height of the Supertrees in the frame. Shooting from low down also helped exaggerate that scale and let the circular skywalk ring stand out around the trunk. Singapore has a lot of modern architecture, but this part of Gardens by the Bay felt especially surreal at night, somewhere between a park, an art installation, and a science fiction set.