Fun Photo...Wednesday

Man, I am not good at planning.  If I were better at alliteration I would have saved this feature for Friday.  Oh well!

As an effort to continue working on my photography and my fancy-pants camera, I'm going to try to feature museum-related pictures I've taken at least once a week.  This week's images are from the Out of This World opening at the Tampa Bay History Center this past weekend.

No special techniques, just a fun behind the scenes image

The blurred people surrounding the Storm Trooper were an accident caused by the low lighting in the gallery, but I really love this image.

Blurrier than I'd like (again, really low lighting in the gallery and I don't have a tripod yet), but I think this captures some of the wide-eyed wonder that I love to see in museums.

This blur actually was on purpose in an effort to make a static gallery appear a little more dynamic.  I think it turned out well.

Again, no photographic skill, just my very favorite image of the whole day.  A happy Imperial family heading home.

Mission: failed :(

This last Saturday the Tampa Bay History Center opened its new exhibit, Out of this World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television.  The opening event included an 'invasion' by brilliantly-costumed Star Wars re-enactors (...can you re-enact a war that didn't really happen?), a brave defense by the outnumbered Rebel forces, and some Ghostbusters thrown in for good measure.  It was an unusual event for the History Center, but meant to bring in visitors who might not normally be interested in a regional history center.  I thought it was the perfect opportunity to continue my ambassadorial project of bringing new people into museums.  The History Center did okay, but I failed utterly.  None of the friends I contacted about the parade and exhibit made an appearance.

Okay, so I only contacted three friends, it's not like I was abandoned by everyone I every met, but I was still sorry they didn't make it.  And a big part of the reason I was sorry was that it was such a fun day.  It was an amateur production, sure, but everyone was having a great time, and the exhibit has some great costumes that I think my friends--big Star Wars and sci-fi fans all-would have been really stoked to see.  (Darth Vader's helmet!  Indiana Jones's jacket!  Burt Ward's Robin costume!  Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West hat!)  I had hoped--much like the History Center probably hopes--that these artifacts of pop culture would have lured in visitors who are less interested in the artifacts of Florida's early people, but apparently not even a real honest-to-goodness working life-sized R2D2 was enough to make it happen this time around.

 

Which sort of begs the question, what does it take to get these reluctant museum-goers in the door? 

filler

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a museum since reading about the Chernobyl Museum.  More to come on that later, but I haven't been able to shape my thoughts into something coherent yet.  In the meantime, this:

 

The miniature worlds of old-school museum dioramas fascinate me.  The care and detail that go into these tiny worlds is astounding, and I kind of secretly wished that I was a small as the Indian in the Cupboard so I could explore them more fully.  So when my fancy-pants camera finally arrived in the mail, the old Native American hall with its amazing dioramas was the first place I went with it.  In the interest of full disclosure, there were a lot of crappy shots before I got these, and these are much more luck than skill...but I'm still really happy with them.

"exciting" "developments"

I bought a new camera today, one of those fancy jobbers where you can change the focus and the settings on your own.  It's one of the most expensive single purchases I've ever made, but I think it will be worth it. I'm looking forward to some great images of the museum where I work, remembrances before I move away in a few weeks.  I've always wanted to be able to take pictures that show things the way they look to me...

So, yes, exciting for me, but probably not you, dear [non-existent] reader.  In the meantime, you can chew on this.  Is she right?  Do real museums require dinosaurs?