Natural History Museum

The last time I blipped this building was almost a year ago, and for the same reason - we had been to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition (but then I showed a picture of the main hall interior).

This really is an annual event not to be missed. The images were again - as always - stunning. They have repeated the layout they used last year, a significant improvement on previous years because you can follow a logical flow through the various categories - and it certainly helps the flow of people when, as today, the exhibition is busy.

We normally try to avoid weekends and certainly try to avoid school holidays when the museum is a very popular family destination, but we have been having difficulty finding a suitable slot to visit this year, so we had to succumb to a Sunday visit. The museum certainly was busy, but we were still able to see all the images in the exhibition without difficulty. We always like to take our time and study every single image and the accompanying captions. In total we were in there for more than two and a half hours!

One thing I noticed was how much the advent of digital photography appears to have helped natural history photographers. I think a majority of the shots were taken at ISO400 or higher - some at very high ISO settings. This would simply not have been possible in film days - and certainly not with the superb technical quality of these images. So photographers are now able to photograph scenes that might have been virtually impossible a decade or so ago.

The other thing I noticed (for the Canon vs Nikon brigade) is that, unlike the Landscape Photographer of the Year competition, where the use of a Canon 5D appeared to be almost compulsory, Nikon reigned supreme in this competition. You can't read anything into that, of course.

(From a happy Canon user.)