A Trip to the Aquarium
A week or so ago we went out to the Vancouver Aquarium and met up with some friends, and had a nice day wandering around and looking at fishes. Below are some of the results photographically. Clicky-clicky for higher res versions.
Snake from the tropical section.
More after you click….
Sea anemone.
Sea anemone.
Jellyfish.
Jellyfish.
Jellyfish.
Jellyfish.
Belugas in the beluga habitat.
This would make a perfect LOLCat – “I call this press conference… to discuss mah bukket!!!”
Sealion catching a fish… you can see it just pre-mouth stage here.
The fantastic statue outside the front enterance.
Flowers outside the enterance
Photography inside the aquarium is hard! I tried a technique I read about using a plastic hood to put the lens against the glass to eliminate glare. That worked well, except that the light was so low that I couldn’t focus well (the hood only fit my manual lenses). Otherwise I had to punch the ISO up to 1600 to get any sort of a decent shot, and when my camera wasn’t hunting for focus (a flaw in the *ist-D is it hunts a lot in low light), it got some decent shots, but there were a lot of underexposed fish-blurs in the batch as well 🙂 Definitely something I’d like to throw the K10-D at with it’s in-body shake reduction. I also really have to learn to re-set my settings when I go outdoors…. a lot of my shots outside the front entrance were taken at ISO 800 because I had forgotten to change it back.
By the way, the colors in the jellyfish shots weren’t pumped up or saturated… they came out of the camera that way, as the new (?) jellyfish exhibit is designed to give maximum impact. I just wish it was brighter so I could have gotten better shots. Sadly at 100% they are fairly grainy/blotchy 🙁 My intention though was to get the vivid colors that I was seeing, and I hope you’ll agree I did a decent job of that.
Hi Arc,
The snake is an emerald boa, gorgeous but they tend to have a nasty disposition. Mainly a predator on birds and small mammals, I believe. Non-poisonous.
“Jellyfish” is an out-dated and incorrect name. Fish are vertebrates and have a backbone. The coelenterates you photographed are more properly commonly known as “sea jellies’. And yes, this same logic applies to sea stars (not “starfish”). 🙂
As you point out, photography of aquaria is hard. I’m very impressed with the quality of your pix.
Cheers,
Rob
Thanks Robert….. I’m going to refuse to change the names though… a jellyfish is always a jellyfish! 🙂