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After six months of redevelopment, the Natural History Museum this month reopened its centrepiece, Hintze Hall, with Dippy the Diplodocus replaced by the skeleton of a 25-metre blue whale named Hope. I was fortunate to be able to visit the museum a few days after it opened, and to behold the remarkable sight of this creature -- the largest ever to have lived -- suspended from the hall's ceiling and diving downwards with its jaws open.
Having last photographed Hintze Hall more than two years ago, it was fun to return to the location and to try an angle I hadn't photographed in a while. The challenge here is always the immense number of visitors the museum welcomes each day, and my workflow to capture the scene nearly empty was similar to my previous take, which is to say about 45 minutes of continuous shooting and then using Photoshop's Statistics function within the Scripts menu to calculate and remove any inconsistent elements. In addition to bracketing my exposures so that I could later blend them using luminosity masks, I was also drawn to the dramatic mid-morning sunlight coming through the windows, which cast a warm glow on Hope and created a wonderful array of patterns along the hall's floor. The sun on this particular morning was constantly dipping behind the clouds, however, so I was restricted to shooting only when the sun reappeared, as well as trying to capture each part of the scene without people at least once to ensure a clean and straightforward editing process.
Although I'd bracketed nine exposures and had a range of tonality to work with, the bulk of my workflow was geared towards the darker exposures, which captured all of the detail in the museum's windows and a moody sense of mystery beneath its arches, as well as emphasising the pattern of light and shadow along the ground. With this said, I used the brighter exposures to gently restore detail to the brickwork and to emphasise portions of the building's architecture, for example J. W. Beaufort's portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace to the right of Darwin's statue. After this, I used a mixture of Curves, Hue/Saturation, Colour Balance, Selective Colour and Gradient Map adjustments to find the right shade of blue for the shadows and to emphasise the warmth of the sunlight streaming through the windows. Inside Nik's Colour Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro, I significantly lowered the midtones and softened the structure across the museum's floor, as well as applying a small amount of the Detail Extractor and Tonal Contrast filters to the walls to bring out their texture.
The mother and son beneath the whale were added further along in the workflow, but I felt they completed the image. Besides providing a sense of the scale of the skeleton towering over them, there seemed to be something meaningful about their presence beneath a display that's intended as a symbol of humanity's power to shape a sustainable future. This particular whale was stranded at Wexford Harbour in southeast Ireland in 1871, but the species was hunted to the brink of extinction during the 20th century, with the blue whale being the first species that humans finally resolved to save on a global scale. Their population has steadily begun to climb again, hence the name Hope, and there seemed to be something very hopeful about a parent and child visiting an environment where everyone is encouraged to be a part of that change.
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of London's Natural History Museum, soon to be replaced with a blue whale.
Minolta MD Rokkor 50mm 1.4
Ok, I may have lied yesterday when I said I had no more shots from London. I do have a couple more, which I'll share another time but I forgot I'd shot another view of the amazing Blue Whale skeleton at the Natural History Museum. This is Hope, the 25m Blue Whale that was washed up on the southern Irish coast in 1891. She replaces Dippy the Diplodocus as the NHM's Hintze Hall centrepiece. As much as Dippy was loved by the people who visited, Hope is just as impressive and well worth a visit to see.
I last photographed the Natural History Museum a little over a year ago. At the time, capturing the central hall from the first floor while the place was empty was partly down to heavy rain on the morning I visited, and partly down to sheer luck.
I’m still happy with the image I captured, but always wished I could shoot the hall from one of its upper corners; besides conveying the enormity of the museum’s scale, the perspective provides a better vantage point of the lower concourse, as well as a closer look at the incredible detail in the museum’s brickwork and the ornate architecture decorating the hall. I’d also always wished I could shoot on a sunnier day and capture a warmer tone inside the location.
I returned to the museum on a busy day, eager to tackle the challenge of removing crowds of people from an image. The technique involved continuous shooting over half an hour, and then applying script settings in Photoshop and comparing 60 shots to identify and retain only the consistent elements – the consistent elements essentially being the building itself.
I made the project trickier for myself because I was also eager to capture and blend multiple exposures – brighter exposures to ensure a sharp, clean finish to the detail in the shadows, and darker exposures to preserve as much detail as possible near the brightly lit windows – but the end result is almost exactly the image I’d had in my head: a crowded location made eerily empty in the middle of the day, leaving only the stunning 19th-century architecture of the building and the warm sunlight pouring through its windows.
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I am certainly loving all the Christmas red, but I was craving a little pink today.
Wishing you all a blessed weekend!
Dippy, the Natural History Museum's iconic Diplodocus cast on display at Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow.
Hope, the Blue Whale Skeleton at the Natural History Museum, named as a symbol of humanity's power to shape a sustainable future. Blue whales were hunted to the brink of extinction in the twentieth century, but were also one of the first species that humans decided to save on a global scale. In the 1800s there were an estimated 250,000 blue whales across the world's oceans. Decades of commercial hunting drove the species to the brink of extinction, with only around 400 thought to be left in 1966. That year, in London, the world took a remarkable decision to legally protect blue whales from commercial hunting. Since then the population of blue whales has steadily grown to its current level of around 20,000.
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Also? Apple Crisp (Keep your giraffes away from my Apple Crisps). I made four of these babies today and one mini-me. Which I nommed. You get the before (When the Hurly Burly's Done Preset) and the after (Raceytayed Preset).
For Scarlet Sunday - come add your photo to the Weekly Showcase!
Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Maggie, Happy Birthday to YOU!
Maggie turns 21 today! Hope you have a wonderful day dear flickr friend.
Check out her stream, she has an amazing talent!
I replaced the original photo with this. I don't think I quite liked the first. :] Now this looks like they're dancing.*dumtidum*
It’s an awfully slow Saturday here. It also rained, which makes it lazier that it already is. I’m having coffee as I type this. Want some? :D
Love is everything it's cracked up to be. And more.
Hah! I know this isn't original but I just had to try this kind of ring-with-a-heart-shadow photo. :D
~J.K. Rowling, "The Second War Begins," Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003, spoken by the character Luna Lovegood
I LOVE Luna!
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look into her eyes
pools of ocean blue
so soulful, so soft
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my first picture with a texture; I used one of les brumes's.
Dippy, el diplodocus del Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Madrid, cumple el 1 de diciembre de 2013 la centena de años. El Dippy madrileño es una copia del diplodocus homónimo que se muestra en el Museo de Historia Natural de Londres, a su vez una reproducción de un esqueleto de Diplodocus carnegii encontrado en Wyoming en 1899.
Dippy, the diplodocus in the Museum of Natural Science in Madrid, had his centennial birthday on December 1st 2013. The madrilenian Dippy is a copy of the diplodocus of the same name in the Museum of Natural History of London, which is a reproduction of a Diplodocus carnegii skeleton found in Wyoming in 1899.
SGUJ based WDP-4B loco - 40025 is doing light job hours at Sealdah (SDAH) station yard before going to rest after completing the job of hauling 12344 (NJP-SDAH) Darjeeling Mail upto its ultimate destination !!
I simply adore this session, I couldn't decide which ones to share.... we dug out that old bike from a junk yard, love it.... wanted to take it home with me, lol!
I'm doing Musical Exploration Night (M.E.N.) tonight. It's amazing. I'm listening to songs I had no idea existed.
Mostly Jazz and Blues. Ah, gorgeous.
This was a very inspiring day today. We listened to some oldies and got jiggy with it. Thanks to a good friend here on flickr. We listened to the Archies all day.
Check out my good friend Lauren Di Giorgio
www.flickr.com/photos/laurendigiorgiophotography/
To dedicate this song to Lauren & The Archies. This is my candy girl capture. Here is the same link she used to show the video. Please listen and get inspired as well.
Sugar, Sugar by the Archies