Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture

Seattle's Burke Museum is small, but perfectly formed. A modest $10 entrance fee will give you access to a wonderful slice of local Washington natural history, a modest but delightful collection of dinosaurs and friendly staff who are more than happy to let you stroke their porcupines and give you card pangolins to colour in and keep.

I was particularly drawn to the "local" focus of the museum, which like so much of Seattle in general reminded me a lot of the museum back home in Auckland. I find a lot of the bigger Natural History Museums tend to get a bit... non specific - you could be in any museum anywhere in the world, so its always nice to be in a smaller space that focuses directly and primarily on the local area and the history of the city and part of the world that you are in. It gives the museum a different voice, a different feel, to any other museum anywhere in the world, which makes it interesting. And it feels welcoming, and like home.

They also recently found a mammoth tusk right around the corner from my hotel in South Lake Union, which probably made me more excited than it should have. I love when Museums get excited about this stuff on social networking and share it like crazy.

These photographs were all shot using my Yashica TL-Electro X using Kodak Ektar 100 film. You can see more photographs from my museum collection here.