Two London Exhibitions Reviewed

2011 Veolia Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Natural History Museum.

Until 11th March 2012

Adults £9 Concessions £4.50

I recently visited this must see event. Although it does travel round the country, at the NMH it is displayed as large backlit transparencies. These really do the images justice. The range and quality is superb now. We have become so used to the incredibly high quality of David Attenborough’s programmes that anything less would seem inferior.

Some of the photographs by the younger entrants were amazing, even, or especially, the 10-14 age group.

It was also interesting to note the number of photographs taken at high ISOs and still looking razor sharp with no obvious noise. (Many of these on Nikon D3s)

It’s quite a large exhibition and on a Sunday was moderately busy, although we did not need to prebook and got in within 10 minutes. On a weekday it should be a leisurely and stimulating experience.

Next door the V & A have brought out some of their valuable original prints from some of Photography’s great exponents. The exhibition is free and worth a look while you’re in the vicinity. Most of the pictures will be familiar to keen photographers, but it’s good to see the originals.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Competition 2011

National Portrait Gallery Until 12th February 2012

Entry £2

This is the usual rather mixed bag, with some outstanding work and some which I found left me cold, but then I feel sure we would all have different opinions. I found that some marvellous work which should obviously have been awarded high placing was ousted by some rather less exciting efforts....but that’s my opinion. I did find the inclusion of a distant rear view of an African prostitute lying on a mattress strange..while it is documentary work of some merit, I would never call it a portrait, it spoke of the human condition but told me nothing of the girl herself.

The winning Guinea Pig was very pretty, but I felt that there was much stronger work present. However for £2 it’s worth a visit, and there are some rather good documentary pictures in the basement near the snack bar which are excellent and free to see while you visit the loo.

John Clarke

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/