The Grand Old Institution

 

This is the Natural History Museum, on Cromwell Rd. in London, which from the outside still looks much as it did when it opened in April, 1881. Brainchild of Sir Richard Owen, that “Count Dracula” of palaeontology, it has always been one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world. I photographed it on November 1^st, 2010, on my third UK trip; this was the second time I visited London’s South Kensington museum district, and it was also the last time I had the chance to do so. Distance and cost are relentless, after all. I was really under the weather on that trip, so was unable to appreciate the sights as they deserved—still, I brought home the pictures, and I have them to this day. This is a simple street snap, but at least I managed to hold the camera square! I remember the sun being so low in the sky, despite a late morning time, that most of the street was in deep shadow. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Fitting the Frame

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Very large objects can be very difficult to fit into a photographic frame and maintain any sort of pleasing composition. This is the British Museum's Diplodocus skeleton, which at over 80 feet long is a textbook example of how to accommodate such a subject within the confines of a photographic frame. I shot this subject from every angle imaginable, and going upstairs was a way to shrink the apparent scale. Note the slight blur on some museum patrons, a clue to the light levels and thus exposure length. Sharpened and contrast-balanced, with a tweak of extra colour. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Available Light, With a Difference

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This is the British Museum's mounted skeleton of the dinosaur Baryonyx walkeri, photographed in December, 2006, and it presented a different lighting situation to most other displays. The floodlights built into the mount provided all the primary illumination, whereas most of the freestanding dinosaurs are in mysterious, soft lighting and are so large that flash shots tend toward the indistinct as the subject flows into the background in ways contrary to the usual performance of flash. This is a non-flash shot and the contrast level is excellent. The frame was sharpened and colour-enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

The British Museum (Natural History)

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Grandeur was a symbol of empire, and the neo-classicism of architectural design in the 18th and 19th centuries was a deliberate invocation of the respectability of classical times: London and Paris are scattered with Neo-Roman buildings. This is the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, brainchild of the always-controversial Richard Owen in the 1850s, an example of the way Britain's economic and political power had the resources to devote to public structures of the magnitude of cathedrals and palaces. With a building so very large it is never easy to capture it appreciably in the confines of a single frame, and this shot, taken from the other side of Cromwell Rd, is about as far back as you can get before the trees interfere with the composition rather than contributing to it. Sharpened and colour- and contrast-balanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Old Bones Tell Stories

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This is the British Museum (Natural History)'s specimen of the American horned dinosaur Triceratops, photographed in December, 2006. it is complete to the last fragment, and an imposing reconstruction. The museum's dinosaur gallery is kept in twilight which makes photography difficult: long exposures, meaning keep that camera steady, or flash. The short range of the S5600's flash is probably the camera's single weakness, certainly the only factor which I can say has had a measurable impact on my work with it. This is a flash shot, and it pays off because the skeleton is just inside the size range at which the flash can envelope it, certainly it's important elements for the purposes of the POV. The ambient lighting is warm-toned and low but helps fill in the darker areas with tonal variation, while the flash has brought up the fine texture of the essentially dark subject matter well. Mid-tones were enhanced with gamma correction, then the image was contrast-balanced and the colour and sharpness tweaked. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, flash. Image by Mike.

Weightless

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These are lifesize fibreglass replicas of dolphins, porpoises and Orcas hanging in the British Museum (Natural History), in London. The sculptures are wonderfully realistic and when viewed from an angle that minimises their suspension it seems that living creatures are drifting overhead. From this perspective they do indeed seem weightless, and the dizzying effect of the image is its strength. The lighting was once again in the cracks for my filmspeed, but this is a solid shot. As an interior with fair lighting, flash would have been ineffective, especially given the distance to the subject matter. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. December, 2006. Image by Mike.

Stone Bones

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Big things can be difficult to frame, hard to hold focus on, and lighting can change across their area. This is the famous Diplodocus longus skeleton at the British Museum (Natural History), one of those distributed by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, based on a specimen from Sheep Creek, Wyoming, unearthed by the collector Barnum Brown in 1901 (if I remember my palaeontology trivia correctly!) I visited the museum in December 2006 and was amazed to find that photography for personal use was as welcome among the great collections as in any other English museum (it's not in Australia!) I took dozens of frames around this 80+ foot animal, from every perspective, and it was far from easy to get an overall image of the critter. Closeups on various bits and from unusual perspectives, but a single view of the whole beast? I walked around it for fifteen minutes, framing and adjusting and snapping. The light was also a little soft, necessitating a long exposure, thus the sharpness of this shot is important too: note the burning-out of the tall windows at the back and the blur of the man walking in the frame. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Shooting Straight

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I remember standing below the incredible facade of the British Museum (Natural History), in London, and framing this shot for a long, long time. Arms get tired, eyes start to twitch, but eventually you can frame the shot in virtually perfect alignment with the symmetry of the subject matter. The organic nature of some subjects can mask alignment from the eye's perception, often optical illusions will guide how you align the camera and only become obvious in the image, divorced from its locality. Reflex shooting is especially vulnerable to this, such as all those shots of taxying aircraft in which the horizon slopes down to the left (due to the nervous tension of catching a moving subject and the pressure of the shutter release on the right side of the camera). Here the stonework forms a virtual grid pattern, a symmetry laid out for the eye, and the subject was standing still, I could take all the time I needed to balance the composition. The frame was sharpened, but otherwise minimally enhanced for publication. December, 2006; Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.