the geffrye

Gotta love this city.  You live here for dozens of years, but the very day you take a different route, turn left, say, instead of right, a brand new world opens to you.  Other Londoners are laughing at me now, but can you believe I'd never heard of, let alone seen, the Geffrye museum in Hackney?  Believe.

Took a wrong turn one day and there it was in all its magnificence.  To steal from the official website;

"The Geffrye Museum is devoted to the history of the home, showing how homes and gardens reflect changes in society, behaviour, style and taste over the past 400 years."

Wow.  What a concept.  I was immediately mesmerised by the trees (of course) in the courtyard of the museum that I spent a considerable time studying them.  Thankfully, there were benches strategically located at points of wonder around the yard.

The courtyard was eerily deserted, even though just outside the gates is a major road bustling with foot traffic.  Perhaps this structure is in a way sociologically invisible to the people of Hackney?  I wont go there.  Maybe everyone was already indoors, or like me, took too long to find the official entrance and just gave up and left.  I did find the entrance in the end, but for me, the outdoors, the yard, the building itself was museum enough, and I never actually made it inside.  Another day maybe.

I found the photography a little challenging.  It was freezing cold despite the apparent sunshine.  The Zenit-e is mostly metal, so it felt like shooting with a block of ice.  The light meter on the camera doesn't work, so I was relying on the world famous 'sunny 16' rule, which was soooort of ok.  The clouds kept blocking the sun though, and the shades created by the large trees made for some dynamic range issues.  Having said that, I think Lady Gray 400 did well to handle all that.  And yes indeed that is the widely coveted swirly bokeh of the Helios M42 58mm lens you see below.