V&A: Looking Up

More satisfying in large ("L"), I think.

This is the atrium inside the Exhibition Road entrance of the V&A.
I remember trying to photograph this with my 18-200mm lens and failing to achieve what I wanted... 18mm on the D200 was the full-frame equivalent of 27mm; it is amazing how much different those 3mm make (this was at 24mm on my 24-70mm lens). It seems to me that the V&A isn't as iconic as the NHM architecturally, but it is still a wonderful building and full of photogenic and atmospheric features and spaces.

I took quite a few atypical photographs (for me) today: I took quite a few photographs of people (and their reflections) in the marine reptiles gallery. I won't rant about it now (much, perhaps), but I'm always rather dismayed by how many people walk through the gallery and talk about the "wall of dinosaurs". Dinosaurs were reptiles (terrestrial reptiles), and although marine reptiles are also reptiles (!), they are neither terrestrial nor are they dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were Archosaurs (a clade which contains dinosaurs, the pterosaurs, and crocodilians) and the most recent common ancestor of all dinosaurs was not an ancestor of the marine reptiles; they had already split off as a different lineage. On a related note, birds are dinosaurs: when people talk about the dinosaurs going extinct they really ought to say "the dinosaurs except for those that went on to become what we call birds..." or simply "non-avian dinosaurs".
So there. Rant over.
For now...

Anyway, this chap was moving very slowly along the wall of marine reptiles, and seemed absolutely mesmerised by the fossils.