Victoria & Albert Museum: Room 50 HDR

More satisfying in large (please press "L").

This is the ceiling of The Paul and Jill Ruddock Gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum. I find it hard to resist getting my camera out when I see it... The gallery is titled "The Renaissance City 1350-1600" because it contains large-scale works which were once parts of Renaissance buildings. I actually find the ceiling and space more photogenic and engaging than the contents.

This picture is hand-held HDR (my blips are rarely planned enough to leave me in a situation where I want to make an HDR image and have a tripod with me); the picture is much more satisfying for it because (for instance) the colour of the sky through the windows would have been obliterated by overexposure had I just taken a single picture exposed for the inside of the gallery.

I went to the V&A during my lunch-break to see the "Heatherwick Studio: Designing the Extraordinary" exhibition. It was fantastic : the studio is responsible for some very high-profile designs including the Velodrome for the London 2012 Olympics, the London 2012 Olympic flame cauldron, and the new Routemaster bus, but the idea (or philosophy perhaps) that I found most interesting and wonderful was the way that the studio uses materials themselves as inspiration for designs. The structural properties as well as aesthetic qualities of materials have led the design of many of their projects, with buildings modelled on the way paper or rubber folds as well as a covered park modelled on the cracks in the dry earth of a desert, and bridges (supported only at each end) made entirely of glass, which is made possible by the incompressibility of the material.
It is a really amazing exhibition, but is soon to close (this Sunday).