I had a recent trip to the Natural History Museum with a friend who had picked up a Canon 7D. Love the camera, but I’ll definitely be sticking with my 50d for the time being.
The journey to the museum from my house is pretty straight forward by car, but when you get there, parking is a completely different matter. It took me about 20 minutes of driving around the outside to eventually find a free parking space. In London at the weekends there is no congestion charge and no charge for parking meters in most places so it’s much cheaper than the train/tube etc…
Something to bear in mind when you head to the Natural History Museum is that you can’t use a tripod in there, so take a Gorillapod or an Ultrapod with you. With Careful placement you can still take some awesome images.
Having said that, I did take my tripod and was apprehended a few times, but with a bit of smooth talking with each of the guides who told me I couldn’t use the tripod, a nice smile always helps and a few fun cheeky comments…
One guide approached me after I had setup my tripod and was ready with the remote shutter, he said: “You can’t use a tripod here”, I’d already set the camera for bracketed exposures, so as I turned to him with a smile, calmly saying “So I can’t do this”, my smile getting bigger, he smiled back with a response of “No, definitely not”, I then held the shutter release down for another couple of shots “or this?”, he started to laugh and then stated “Well, I’m going to pretend I didn’t see you, but the next person who comes along might not be so forgiving”.
This routine continued a further 5 times with various guides in different parts of the museum. The important thing was the smile, they knew I wasn’t a trouble maker and was just taking pictures. If I could give you any advice with bending the rules with people like this, use a smile and a bit of fun, you may just get away with it. But, if you’re told no, just accept it…
My friend had a couple of free tickets for the Wild Life Photographer of the Year exhibition, I’d already seen most of the images on the web, but figured it might be nice to see them blown up into A3+ size images. The overall quality of the shots was amazing and a very high standard. The overall winner as you will know has already been removed from the exhibition… lets see who fills the spot this year… I’m thinking about entering myself and there is only one week left before entry closes, it’s very difficult to choose the right image for this, especially as the standard is so high.
To see some of the images I took at NHM go take a look in the portfolio section of my website…
In a week or two I’ll be heading to the Victoria and Albert museum and they have the same rule, lets see how I get on there with a tripod.
I’ve given myself a list of photographic locations I’d like to try shooting at over the coming weeks
* A London tube station.
* A main London train station.
I’m liking HDR styling a lot at the moment, so it will be interesting to see what I can take…
Note: I’ll be going back through my posts and adding some pictures to the Sudan sections and others.
Note: If you made it here without coming through my photo site, make sure you take a look: www.eyeforimages.com