Museum of Scotland

This is the Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland - a magnificent Victorian hall of cast-iron columns and a vast arched glass roof, completed in 1888. Flooded with daylight, this three level gallery area is one of Britain’s finest museum interiors. Entry is free and the museum is accessible, only a few minutes from the Royal Mile.

Light here is well balanced from the glazed roof, but watch for blown highlights on very bright days reflecting off the white ironwork. A super-wide lens captures the magnificent roof and the full length of the gallery in one upright composition. Shooting portrait format helps to accentuate the height of the room by retaining more of the floor and ceiling in the frame. This image is taken from the middle gallery making sure the wide lens is perpendicular to the pillars to keep the symmetry and the columns vertical. The museum is incredibly popular and the hall is rarely empty of visitors moving through the shot, although this can really help to illustrate the scale and grandeur of the hall.