The day after Christmas I visited museum Boerhaave in Leiden with some friends. This museum covers the history of science, so I expected to see some interesting artefacts with nice shapes.

The first item that caught my eye was the light bulb shown above. I work for Philips, and this is a historic bulb developed and built by Philips (as you can see in the picture if you look closely). I am not good at talking about history, so I’ll stick to the photography part of it 😉 . The challenge was to work around the reflection from the glass box it was displayed in. I had to find an angle that minimised reflections from the glass, but would still give me a good composition. The result is this photo, and I quite like the simple shape and muted colors. There are still some reflections, but I actually like them here, and they don’t cover the light bulb itself.

The next photo is a part of a planetarium from 1670. It required some climbing stairs, trying different angles, and looking for the direction with the least clutter. I am still not entirely happy with it, but with this photo it sort of feels as if you’re inside the planetarium.

The museum itself presented some nice repetitive lines. I like how it is interrupted by the legs…

There was a special exhibition on light and illusions. This part was not so much about history, but more about fun. It was quite difficult to capture the experience, as you were allowed to push buttons and move objects ( 🙂 ), but apart from that it provided some colorful images!