Disappearing People

I have been in London today primarily to visit The 'Waddesdon Bequest' in its newly opened room at the British Museum.  This is a collection of items from the Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor given by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild in the past, on condition that the items were kept together in their own room known as 'The Waddesdon Bequest'. It is an amazing collection of beautiful and superbly crafted items and well worth a look should you be in the area.  Waddesdon Manor had arranged this visit for any Volunteers tha wanted to go, and we were driven up by coach. Unfortunately the traffic (partly through an accident blocking one road) was so bad that we were too late for the talks that had been set up for us.  We did, though, have as much time as we liked to look around and someone on call to answer any queries.

I then spent a bit of time in the entrance hall practising making people disappear through using a very slow shutter speed.  I balanced my camera on my scarf and used a remote shutter release as I was using a 30 second exposure.  This gets rid of almost all the movement of the people as long as they keep moving. When they stop to take a photograph or check their emails the camera then picks this up.  this technique would work best where the movement was faster and might require filters - I was already using the highest f-stop I could and ISO 100 - so that the final exposure is not too bright. Interesting to do and I will definitely try this again.

The reflection comes from the collection 'pot' I was using as a 'tripod' where visitors can add their donations for the Museum. Interesting effect but the image would be improved if this wasn't scratched and marked.

I was planning to come home by train rather than the coach and so I went off into London to follow a walking trail in the Marylebone area. The book I use offers lots of little details which would be missed in the normal course of events and some background history. For instance, one house where Paul MacCartney stayed with the Asher family when his girlfriend was Jane Asher, telling how he would escape the press by climbing onto the neighbour's house using the adjoining flat roofs, and would then be allowed out of another exit.  You'd never know that by looking.