Over Thanksgiving weekend, some friends and I went to Chicago to see the King Tut Exhibit. It was amazing. Unfortunately, they had a no photo policy on that exhibit. With the crowd and all the security people, I didn’t want to get kicked out so I didn’t take any pictures of that exhibit. But our tickets included general admission to the rest of the museum, and I took these photos while we were there.
Well…. To be entirely frank, I took a lot more pictures than just these 4 but the rest turned out to be crap. Maybe when I have a chance to work on them a bit with GIMP they might be worth posting, but I’m not holding my breath.
Good choice, the Field Museum is probably my favorite of the ones around here. It is a challenging photographic environment, though. Their permanent Egypt exhibit is so good that I was almost disappointed with the King Tut one… 🙁
Amen to that. There’s so much I want to photograph in the Field Museum. But with all the other patrons, the highly reflective cases and low lighting; it’s a royal pain to get any good shots. Especially when what you want is in one of those cases (e.g. 99% of what I want to shot). *sigh*
And while I’d agree the permanent Egyptian exhibit is quite good; it lacks the shiny, shiny gold of the King Tut exhibit. Also, did you see that cartouche box in the Tut exhibit? The finish on that wood looked brand, spanking new and it’s positively ancient. Kind of blows my mind how well that was preserved.
I’ve gotten some pretty cool shots there with a 50mm f/1.4 lens I have, and some from a 20mm f/1.8. I still had to use ISO 800 or 1600, I think. It’s really dark in a lot of places. And those cases make it impossible sometimes…
I must admit, the gold was amazing. I think I do remember the cartouche. The craftsmanship on one of the chairs blew me away, too, not to mention how well preserved it was.
I think I was just hoping to see the famous face mask… 🙁
Unfortunately I’ve not upgraded to a DSLR yet, so all my recent photos are done with a Canon PowerShot S500. I’ve still got an old Pentax K1000SE packed away somewhere. But my eyes are getting bad and these days I rely on auto-focus to avoid blurry photos.
Yeah, it was pretty disappointing that the mask wasn’t there given all the advertising for the exhibit featured it.