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| Diplodocus dinosaur skeleton in front of the Natural History Museum, London. |
On our recent trip to London, the
Natural History Museum was our first stop. The museum is enormous and you can’t possibly see it
all in one visit. And even if you do have time, it is best to decide which
things to focus on. Our main goal was to see the exhibit of the winners of the
yearly photography competition—100 photos selected from more than 4000 entries.
We also wanted to revisit some of our favorite parts of the museum.
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| Blue whale skeleton in Hintze Hall. |
We walked to the museum from our hotel near the South
Kensington tube stop and entered at the East Gate, where we followed a path
through the Evolution Garden to get to the Central Entrance. The museum is
free, but we had to line up to go through security. Once inside, the giant skylit
space of Hintze Hall loomed before us, with a huge whale skeleton hanging
overhead and a grand staircase leading up to a statue of Charles Darwin.
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| Art with Statue of Charles Darwin. |
After paying our respects to Darwin, we stopped at the
information booth to pick up a map and get directions to the photo exhibit. The
map divides the museum into four color coded zones. We focused on the Green
Zone which includes birds, the wildlife photographer of the year gallery,
fossil marine reptiles, and treasures of the museum, where we saw the fossil
skeleton of Archaeopteryx, the first bird.
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| Caroline with fossil of giant sea reptile collected by Mary Anning. |
On our way to the photo exhibit we passed by the
amazing display of fossil skeletons of giant marine reptiles, many of them
collected by
Mary Anning in the nineteenth century. During the Dinosaur Age the oceans teemed with these
huge reptiles.
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| Wild Photographer of the Year Gallery. |
The
Wildlife Photographer of the Year photo exhibit requires a ticket, which we
purchased at the entrance. Each photo in the exhibit was backlighted so that it
glowed in the partially darkened room and was accompanied by a label with the
title, photographer’s name and other pertinent information. What surprised me
was not only the diversity of the subjects and locations where they were shot,
but the variety of cameras—ranging from specially designed equipment to a
simple iPhone.
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| Photo of moth camouflaged against tree bark--taken with an iPhone. |
Having worked with photographers on many of my books,
I know how hard it is to get just the right shot. I appreciated a quote mounted
on one wall of the exhibit:
It is vital
to be patient and wait for the moment that completes the story you are trying
to tell, even if it takes hours or days or weeks, or sometimes even years.
(Akansha Sood Singh, natural history filmmaker)
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| Models of two dodos. Extinct since 1681 due to overhunting, habitat loss and predation by other animals. |
The exit from the photo exhibit was through the museum
gift shop where it was possible to buy postcards and books of the images in the
exhibit.
We then visited the bird room in search of the Archaeopteryx fossil but got sidetracked by a case full of birds that have gone
extinct, including the dodo, which once lived on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. Although we found a cast of Archaeopteryx in the bird room, we learned
that the actual fossil, one of the most valuable items in the museum’s
collection, was upstairs in the room of treasures. So we trudged up the stairs
to find it.\ |
| Fossil of Archaeopteryx embedded in limestone. You can see impressions of feathers attached to the wings. |
After viewing Archaeopteryx and the other museum treasures it was time to sit down and have some
refreshments, which we did in the Central Café behind the stairwell on the main
floor. We had seen many of our favorites and been inspired by the photo exhibit.
We’ll come back another day to see more.
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| Main entrance to the Natural History Museum, London. |
