NHM: Central Hall Stained Glass HDR

Much better in large ("L").

Today was my first day back at the NHM after all the merriment, mirth, jollity, and jocundity of Christmas, New Year and all the jazz... I spent the first half of the day trying to work out where my most important piece of software had gone: IT had "rolled out" an upgrade over the "holiday period" except the roll out was still in progress, and hadn't (apparently) reached my computer. *Frowns*

I pulled lots of ferns out of the collection (well, specimens from Selaginella, Isoetes, and Equisetum actually: they are known as "fern allies" which I think is quite amusing. They stand together in wars, frond to frond, but are not true ferns...) then, with nothing much else to do, went for a photo amble. The museum was absolutely heaving! I took photos of crowds (the most dramatic scene being the queue for the Dinosaur Gallery: in school holidays it snakes its way around the main hall like the queue for a ride at a theme park...), but then noticed the rather satisfying glow of the stained glass on the back wall above the statue of Darwin.

I was awfully tempted to photograph the stuffed dodos (Raphus cucullatus) and tag them BlipBigYear in the hope that they'd be included in the list of blipped species, but I suspect that stuffed examples of an extinct species would probably be considered (very) ineligible for inclusion in the challenge... I'm so pleased that I happened to photograph Egyptian geese on Wednesday (even if I think it is poor compared to previous efforts) so that I managed to get my photo included as their entry in the list!