NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON: A Few of Our Favorites

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

Main entrance to the Natural History Museum, London.

ANTELOPE CANYON, ARIZONA, October 2019: A Natural Wonder of Light and Color, Guest post by Caroline Hatton

Sunbeam in Lower Antelope Canyon, near Page, Arizona

My friend and fellow children’s book author Caroline Hatton visited Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon in October 2019. She took all but one of the photos in this post. For more information about her, visit www.carolinehattonauthor.com.

The Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons on Navajo land near Page, Arizona, are natural wonders-- narrow, deep, slot canyons sculpted in sandstone by rushing waters and swirling winds.

In an earlier guest post by Owen Floody about both canyons, photos show how Upper Antelope Canyon was lit on his visit in September. Because the time of year and time of day determine how high the sun is, and therefore how much or how little light penetrates the canyons, the purpose of this post is to compare the two canyons in the first week of October. All visitors are now required to join a guided tour, so I reserved tickets online in advance, for the following dates and times:

- Upper Antelope Canyon: Saturday, October 5, 10:15 a.m. tour

- Lower Antelope Canyon: Friday, October 4, 10:45 a.m. tour

The weather was clear and sunny on both days.

A-shaped, darker Upper Antelope Canyon

V-shaped, brighter Lower Antelope Canyon

The Upper Antelope Canyon tour began with a military-style truck ride from the parking lot to the canyon entrance. The tour is a round trip, walking into the canyon to the end, turning around, and walking back out, with tight traffic control: staying on the right, stopping completely to allow photo-tour guides to line up their photographers to all take a photo with fewer tourists and less suspended dust, and otherwise moving along to prevent traffic jams.

The Lower Antelope Canyon tour began at the parking lot. The tour goes in one direction, from one end of the canyon to the other. The number of people around me was five to ten times less than in the Upper Canyon tour, because fewer people visit the Lower Canyon and because the floor is narrower in the Lower than the Upper Canyon, often allowing only one person at a time to go through.

In both tours, the guide for my group offered help setting cell phone cameras to “vivid colors.” Digital camera users switched to a higher ISO value. Along the walk, the guide offered to take the photos of the famous, nicknamed, rock formations and patterns, on behalf of visitors, by using their phones and cameras, one after the other, as well as to take portraits of couples and families posed by themselves against attractive backgrounds. 

In Upper Antelope Canyon

In Lower Antelope Canyon

The Upper Antelope Canyon is A-shaped. The narrow top allows no sun rays into the canyon, except in a few wider spots, but only on the very top of the rock wall, more than 100 feet (~30 m) above my head. The wide, flat, sandy bottom was easy to walk on, even in the near-pitch darkness. Guides reminded some visitors, who used flashlights to see where they were going, to keep those off, to avoid ruining everyone else’s photos. Indeed, everyone’s camera-setting-enhanced photos made the canyon look brighter, more colorful, and simply more visible than the dim, colorless reality.

The Lower Antelope Canyon is V-shaped. The wide top lets the sun shine on the rock walls. At the entrance, the five flights of stairs going down were of the industrial, metal-grid type. The canyon bottom narrowed here and there to an actual rock V, where the left and right walls met at an acute angle with no flat spot to put a foot down. Photos showed rocks as seen with the naked eye, like melted, stretched, brightly colored candy. Visiting was quieter and more leisurely in the Lower than the Upper Canyon. I would do it again, especially in a different season!

In Lower Antelope Canyon. I like this as a 3D sculpture and as 2D picture.

In Lower Antelope Canyon

 

Lower Antelope Canyon exit. Credit W. Hatton