Ah, The Franklin Institute. Sorry, The Franklin.

(As an aside, what the fuck is up with that? We know that Philadelphia is all Ben-obsessed and everything, but honestly, when your marketing people make it harder to Google you or find pictures of you on Flickr, they deserve to be fired, not to have their efforts rewarded with rebranding. I'm going to continue to call it The Franklin Institute. Period.)

Who would've thought that The Franklin Institute would be such a hotbed for breaches of decorum? But it was, not once, but twice during the King Tut exhibition. And it was again a few weeks ago, when Editor Jim, Sarah, Ross, and I eagerly attended the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibition currently on display. Unfortunately, the Star Wars exhibit is not laid out in a practical way: instead of setting up a series of rooms for people to move through, or at least having arrows indicating how the crowd should flow, the Franklin Institute has set up the exhibit as a free-for-all. One room, no crowd control—it's little wonder that a number of museum patrons had reverted to their pushy toddler selves.

But I'm not here to tell The Franklin Institute how to set up their exhibits. (Although we at Phillyist would be happy to consult if they asked.) Rather, I'd like to address the people going to see The Franklin Institutes's special exhibits. I've already talked, in the columns linked above, about being nice to the other visitors, and about not keeping other visitors from seeing the exhibits because you choose to linger over them for too long, but somehow, I missed one key point: the taking of photographs.

Sure, everyone wants their picture taken with Chewbacca—because Chewy is the best character, obvi—but here's the thing: Chewie is behind glass. So is R2D2. So is C3PO. Hell, so is Yoda. And Darth Vader. And we all know what happens when we try to take pictures against glass or anything else shiny, especially if we want to use our flash: glare. So instead of a picture of the display case featuring some of the Star Wars franchise's most famous spacecraft, you're going to end up with a photo that looks like you pointed your camera at the sun and, oh look, is that a UFO behind it?

You want to take a picture to commemorate the occasion, of course, but you should go into the exhibit knowing full well that your pictures are not going to come out very well. If you want good pictures of the Wampa, please visit the gift store that The Franklin Institute is going to funnel you through on your way out anyway. Don't block the entire case while you take pictures of all six of your kids (separately!) in front of it, and then get pissed that other people are crowding around trying to see or, at the very least, get past to the other exhibit.

Likewise, don't build a human fence around the entire perimeter of the case (most of the exhibit is in glass cases that you can walk behind to see the artifacts all the way around) so that you can take a pristine shot of the display, free of interference from all the other pesky people who paid to see the exhibit. If it's so important to you that other people not get in your way at a museum, might we suggest the Rodin Museum right across the street? It's usually pretty empty. Plus, the pieces on display there are completely glass enclosure-free.

Two birds, one stone.

Photo of the Wookiee case at the Franklin Institute's Star Wars Exhibition, complete with flash photography glare, via Flickr user busbeytheelder.