This room in the National Gallery is devoid of paintings because the Gallery is carrying out works to its research centre and wants to avoid affecting any paintings that might be hung in this the adjacent room.

A notice said that the works in the research centre are expected to be completed in 2027, so there is plenty of time to see this empty room.

The Barriers

One nice little touch is that the rope barriers that deter visitors from crossing and perhaps touching the paintings, are still there.

Technical Info

I shot this with a Canon EOS R6 at f3.5 at 1/200th of a second and ISO 5000.

I shot at ISO 5000 because of the low light.

The base ISO of this camera is ISO 100, so that’s 5.64 stops lower than ISO 5000.. Each stop means doubling the sensitivity of the sensor to that light. The sensor can do it but at the expense of more noise along with the signal.

To put it another way, the sensor ‘developed’ the scene with less than 1/50th of the light it would have had available if it could shoot at base ISO.

In fact I could have shot at base ISO, but then I would have had to shoot at a much slower shutter speed – and who knows how still I could have held the camera, even with the stabilisation on the lens and in the camera body.

And if the people had moved, then stabilisation wouldn’t have helped.

So I chose a higher ISO on the principle that sharp is better than the risk of blur from camera shake or subject movement, even at the expense of noise.

And just look at the woman’s face and how clean and clear it is. That is a testament to the sensor and processor in the R6 at high ISO.

Mother and daughter looking at La Maternité, Picasso’s painting of a mother and son painted in 1901 in Picasso’s Blue period.

In Greek thought, Heraclitus held that the visible world is not made up of static things but of processes. Everything we encounter is the temporary manifestation of an underlying logos or ordering principle. Fire is never the same from one moment to the next, yet retains its identity. The world of objects is really the visible expression of an invisible dynamic.
This is why he says things like “Nature loves to hide.” and
“You cannot step into the same river twice.” The river is the continuing pattern produced by flowing water.

For Plato, every object in the physical world participates in or reflects an eternal Form. A beautiful horse is an imperfect instance of the Form of Beauty and the form precedes that object. So sad and terminal.

In Kabbalah, all manifestations in the world are products acted up and maintained by the force that drives Creation (with a capital C) the purpose being that man’s purpose in being created it to reveal the force that creates it. (a bit like Heraclitus’ Nature loves to hide,) and the purpose of Creation is for man to enjoy being in touch with the force that creates Man.

The physicist David Bohm said that what we ordinarily perceive as separate objects are not the fundamental reality. They are unfoldings or manifestations of a deeper, undivided whole. “Ultimately, the entire universe has to be understood as a single undivided whole, in which analysis into separately and independently existent parts has no fundamental status.”

Question: What effect would this view have on the photographer deciding what to photograph and how to frame it?

It’s the Women’s T20 World Cup England & Wales 2026 at Lord’s today. It’s on as I write.

So I took a walk the to see the entertainment that was on before the game. The She’s Got Brass band was playing on the street, doubtless to distract the crowds from their impatience to get into the ground.

And the band were very accomplished, with the drummer setting a strong beat and everyone playing well together.

Listen for yourself.