NHM HDR: Rooftops from the Diatom Tower

... on a very grey day. Better in large!
I was standing almost directly above the Giant Sequoia here, and the structure to the of the frame right is the right-hand of the two towers that stand above the main entrance to the museum, from the opposite side...
The tower at the end of the rooftop is the Lichen Tower: one of the several towers abandoned for Health and Safety reasons. The roof belongs to the Cryptogamic Herbarium.

Another tricky choice: my photos today would have made an interesting Blipfolio album... I went up the (abandoned) Diatom Tower again today (with a colleague who was visiting it on legitimate business...); it is no longer in use because access is via a single staircase, so it is deemed too unsafe for occupancy. I think it is such a waste, and that it just needs a bit of modification...
It was a grey and drizzly day, but (unusually) that seems to have added something to my photographs: the tower has quite a strange atmosphere, and the greyness added to the dead and stark feeling. It feels slightly post-apocalyptic up there, or like I imagine Pripyat must have been post-Chernobyl: it feels like it was evacuated suddenly and never revisited... It seems as though work was left half done, rooms abandoned mid-sentence: there are cups with spoons in them, spare shoes left abandoned, files and (old) computers and work. Very strange, and somewhat creepy...

I also took photographs of some of the cryptogamic collection: Ceridwen commented on my Friday blip that she'd "love to see what's inside these amazing cabinets", so I took photographs of them with their doors open, and also photographs of some algae that a friend was working on that had been beautifully arranged and mounted... The problem is, I've now filled my Blipfolio, and feel loathe to delete photos because that would leave a whole load of dead links on my older blips. Hum.

I've put up a (slightly strange) picture of the open cabinets on Blipfolio here, and will make a point of photographing beautiful specimens as and when I stumble across them!