I learned my lesson during my last visit to British Museum (I left home a little too late, the train took an hour and 10 min instead of 45 min, I got there just before 11 am, the queue to get in was enormous and it was crowded as hell!) and so yesterday I was up at 6:15 in the morning (“that’s dedication” said my housemate afterwards). Due to engineering works I had to take a bus first and then catch a train to Liverpool St. I walked to the bus stop in horizontal rain, kind of wishing I was back in my warm bed…

British Museum must be my favourite of all. I’ve been there several times now and still haven’t seen everything. I like to take it slow, a few rooms at a time so I queued outside before they even opened and went straight to the Egypt rooms. Within 15 min or so it was already busy…There’s just no way of beating the crowds and the Egyptian part seems very popular with families – all those cool mummies 😉 I felt a little disappointed. Maybe Friday evenings with longer opening hours are better ?

I couldn’t get to Greek / Roman part either, it must have been temporarily closed. Instead I wandered to the Asian collection and my goodness, what a beautiful exhibition it was. I enjoyed it so much more than Egypt and almost as much as Mesopotamia, which is my firm favourite. Fewer people too!

I don’t normally photograph much in museums but I had a go at some of ProCamera features – portrait mode seemed very well suited here:

Some 3.5 hours later I headed to Fuji Film House of Photography in Covent Garden. On the first floor there is a so called Arctic Adventure, a few simple setups allowing for photo experiments and, of course, selfies. I quite like the aurora – like effect on the left. These were some pieces of shiny cloth lit with constantly changing light. I also came across a very nicely lit passageway somewhere in the area.

I was supposed to be back at home by 6 pm to avoid travelling on a bus after dark as buses are often full of weirdos but the evening brought such incredible clouds I couldn’t resist a walk along Thames Path. For the first time ever I dared to use Lightroom Mobile Adaptive Sky AI preset. I’ve recently read a very interesting discussion under a Facebook post about the future of photography and the use of AI tools, especially sky replacements and such. Will humans become obsolete if everything can be enhanced or simulated using machine learning and algorithms ? A modest use of ‘Dark Drama’ below only emphasized what was already there. While the low clouds needed little improving, the upper part of sky was too bland compared to what I saw. After all, the camera captures light, but it doesn’t “see” or replicate reality the way we do (yet!) and some form of processing is necessary.

I also used LowLight+ setting of ProCamera and I was very, very impressed. It was so windy on the Millenium Bridge I could hardly hold my phone still, yet the app delivered some really nice results. My old phone is rubbish at night photography but with LowLight+ I can now take fairly decent pics…By the way, this isn’t a sponsored post and I bought this superb app with my own hard earned money 🙂 I’m tempted to upgrade it to get premium features, in particular Auto Perspective Correct which sounds like a godsend indeed. There is another example of Adaptive Sky AI below – can you tell which one ?

I’m on a mission now to photograph my housemate’s dog which is as black as coal, a mix of Staffie and Labrador and it’s hard to take a good picture of him. I have just over 2 months left to succeed before I go back to Chester…and then onto another adventure, but more on that later 🙂