Photos – Vancouver Aquarium

A few days after my 30th birthday, I made my first ever visit to the Vancouver Aquarium (courtesy of my friend C). We had a great afternoon wandering through the exhibits and shooting with our cameras.

I found this particular shoot to be quite a challenge. My Pentax *istDS is now almost 5 years old and it’s beginning to show it’s age. Also, the camera’s performance in low-light situations has often been touch-and-go, at best. Without the use of a tripod – as was the case in this shoot – I often wing it and hope for the best. Whilst low light issues can be resolved by boosting the ISO, my pictures start developing major noise artifacts after ISO 400.

Given these limitations, I was quite surprised to get these results. Yes, I did tweak some of the shots in post-production. The topic of natural shot vs post-production is hotly debated amongst many photographers. I have my own opinions on the subject, but I’ll save them for a future blog post.

Thanks again to C for the Aquarium visit  (and showing me the dolphins!) 🙂

Every so often, a pump would aerate this tank, resulting in a dense burst of bubbles.

One of my favorite shots from the main jellyfish tank

A closer view of the same jellyfish

Juvenile fish foraging at the surface.

There are times when a technically imperfect image can still work.

I rested my camera on top of the glass, looking straight down into this tank.

A great minimum depth of field shot.

This particular eel seemed to be having a bad day, sour expression included.

These marmosets were quite the characters – I particularly like how the mother marmoset’s eye catches the light.

We sat watching this dolphin swimming in the tank for about half an hour. Beautiful and strangely meditative.