Gary Dennison says he stole a man's soul earlier this month, and he still feels bad about it.

"I was walking in the park at the Temple of Heaven very early in the morning," says the 43-year-old horticulturist from Los Angeles.

"I was taking some photos of some interesting seedpods on a tree I couldn't identify, and I heard this amazing music. It was so plaintive, so sweet."

Dennison followed the sound, mesmerized, but after 15 minutes he couldn't find the source.

Then he followed a secluded pathway, and spotted middle-aged man playing a fiddle he was holding upright on a park bench. Intent on his quest, Dennison quietly approached until the man's bent back was framed nicely by the trees but the top of his two-stringed yuehu was clearly visible.

The moment he snapped the picture, he says, he felt a sense of loss.

"I had a weird feeling the guy knew I had done it," he says, "though he didn't turn around.

"But the real loss was for me: I had been savoring the moment, with the lovely sound coming through the trees and the mystery of not knowing who or what instrument was making it. By taking the picture, I turned something that was kind of spiritual into something commonplace."

It's a mistake that Dennison, a one-time anthropology student, likes to think he doesn't make often.

"I don't take a camera when I go to get a massage, which I like to do most Sunday afternoons," he says.

He says the best way to remember a tea ceremony is to leave your camera at home for a similar reason: "You want the memory to be imbedded on your tongue, not your eye."

But for Dennison's passion, which is gardens and plants, his camera gets a workout.

"I've been going to the Purple Bamboo Park (Zizhuyuan) almost every Saturday morning since the end of June," he says, "because it has two of the plants from China that interest me the most: bamboo and lotus."

He admits that many of the "hundreds" of lotus pictures he's taken are "kinda the same."

But seeing those beautiful water plants through the cycle of making flower buds, opening their huge blossoms and then recently making their distinctive seed pods has been a treat for the photographer and amateur botanist, who also spends a lot of weekends at the Beijing Botanical Garden.

"It's not too late to go," he says. "The Autumn Garden there is quite nice and the hillsides around the park will be ablaze in leafy color soon."

Dennison has been in China for five years - "I came for a two-week vacation after my father died and I haven't gotten around to going home yet," he says with a laugh.

Dennison spent two years in Shenzhen writing and translating technical support documents for manufacturers, and now he does that work by telecommuting from Beijing for three clients who make computer software and electronics.

"In high school, I was a lousy German student," he says.

"I never really thought I could learn a language - that I didn't have the aptitude for that particular kind of learning."

But when he realized that he wanted to stay in China, he decided that he wanted to do more than teach English and so he invested in a year of Chinese language study.

"It's not something every expat needs to do," he says.

"But I think anybody who lives in China has a richer experience if they will learn a little more than 'Ni hao' (hello) and 'Yi bei pijiu, qing" (one glass of beer, please)."

Dennison is the proof of that.

(China Daily September 26, 2010)