Baltimore Aquarium

Phil U. · February 14, 2005

My Wife and I took a day-trip to Baltimore to visit the National Aquarium http://www.aqua.org.

When we first got inside, we met some very uncooperative fish. This one was very adamant about not having his picture taken - he just kept shaking his head.

This guy kicked into Warp Speed in his earnestness to get away!

But before long we found some much more willing models.

This guy didn't even move - I think he figured if he stayed still we couldn't see him. He was almost right!

We even found Nemo and his dad Marlin!

Then we got to the Amazon area and saw this spider

Which ruffled my wife's feathers

Phil U. · February 14, 2005

Dolphin Show
Then it was time for the Dolphin show. These are some truly amazing animals.

They demonstrated how the trainers work with them.

They even got an audience member involved

The kids enjoyed getting splashed

Then they really put on a show and did a whole bunch of tricks rapidly

I was a little late on this one - I'm surprised I caught it at all...

Then they got their well-deserved rewards...

...And I got mine

After lunch - we wandered over to Barnes and Noble to get a couple lattes and a scone. These guys kept hanging around. I don't suppose it could have anything to do with me dropping crumbs as I ate...

I could hear this one screaming, "I'll do it, I swear mister! I'll jump if you don't give me more!"

After that, we both decided that we'd had enough. We climbed in the truck and rode on home.

dawson · February 14, 2005

A terrific series of photos. I love the vibrant colors. You should have posted the one where you are being snubbed by the frog that you have out on your smugmug site. I find that one unusually appealing for some reason.

Phil U. · February 14, 2005

dawson wrote:

A terrific series of photos. I love the vibrant colors. You should have posted the one where you are being snubbed by the frog that you have out on your smugmug site. I find that one unusually appealing for some reason.

HA! I guess I forgot that one. Here It is:

Ever feel like someone has turned their back on you?

MuskyDude · February 14, 2005

Fantastic series Phil, I really enjoyed all of them.

Thanks for sharing these!

AJ

Shakey · February 14, 2005

Nice colors ,nice set of photos

Tim

pathfinder · February 14, 2005

Very nice story line. I enjoyed all the pictures and the comments also. What camera were you using?

You did an excellent job and the camera performed several different tasks - low light macros for the fish, teles for the dolphins, macros again for your food, and teles again for the sparrows. Very nice indeed!

Another aquarium in the east is in Chattanooga Tennessee - You might enjoy it also.:):

Phil U. · February 14, 2005

MuskyDude wrote:

Fantastic series Phil, I really enjoyed all of them. Thanks for sharing these!

AJ

Glad you liked them - thanks for commenting!

Phil U. · February 14, 2005

Shakey wrote:

Nice colors ,nice set of photos

Tim

Thank you!

Phil U. · February 14, 2005

pathfinder wrote:

Very nice story line. I enjoyed all the pictures and the comments also. What camera were you using?

You did an excellent job and the camera performed several different tasks - low light macros for the fish, teles for the dolphins, macros again for your food, and teles again for the sparrows. Very nice indeed!

Another aquarium in the east is in Chattanooga Tennessee - You might enjoy it also.:):

Thank you. I have the Sony F-717. It really is a great all-around camera and can turn out some really good looking pics. For a single lens system, it is pretty versatile. As you noted it does have good built-in macro ability. With a max ap of 2 it is fast (good thing too as I don't like to turn up the ISO if I don't absolutely have to - it gets noisy quick). It is not long enough on the tele end - about 135mm equiv. I had to crop the dolphin photos quite a bit. The sparrows though were quite close - cropping really only required for presentation asthetics.

My only complaint with the camera really is that it is just not fast enough (focus time and shutter lag) to be really effective for sports/action shots. I've gotten used to it to the point that if the action is predictable, it's a non-issue. In cases such as the dolphins though, it's pretty tough. It would also have been nice to be able to turn up the ISO quite a bit there too for faster shutter times (you'll notice some motion blur which is fine because it shows motion, but there is also softness due to hand-holding). I would have turned up the ISO but I knew I'd be cropping heavily on those so I didn't want to introduce any extra noise. Now that I look back on it, I wish I had chosen to go the other direction. Oh well, maybe next time.

Whew, didn't mean to type that much when I started, but there you have it.

Thanks again for your comments. I'll have to look into that aquarium in Chattanooga.

Steve Cavigliano · February 14, 2005

Very nice Phil

Those fish can be so skitish. Glad you found some that posed for you

: Very nice color and most of them are very sharp. Good work on the dolphin action shots, too. But, the food shots were definitely the high point for me

J/K Sweet shots and looks like you guys had a great time. Although, your wife looked a bit orange :lol4

A very well shot and interesting series

Thanks for sharing,
Steve

Phil U. · February 14, 2005

Steve Cavigliano wrote:

Very nice Phil

Those fish can be so skitish. Glad you found some that posed for you : Very nice color and most of them are very sharp. Good work on the dolphin action shots, too. But, the food shots were definitely the high point for me J/K Sweet shots and looks like you guys had a great time. Although, your wife looked a bit orange :lol4

A very well shot and interesting series

Thanks for sharing,
Steve

Thanks Steve. Yea, the fish require some patience and timing both of which were pretty difficult because of the throngs of screaming kids pushing and shoving underneath me (sometimes it's nice to be tall). I was pleasantly surprised today when I started editing - I had figured there wouldn't be much at all useable.

Yup - the ones that are not sharp are my fault, but I thought they were still worthy of sharing.

As for my wife, you should see her when she gets mad - she turns into a shape that is RED but otherwise indescribable.

Glad you liked 'em!

Cosmic · February 14, 2005

What fantastic shots! Looks like a very cool place to visit!

I didn't think dolphins could jump out of the water that high in a pool. I knew they could in the ocean, but I didn't think they'd have enough "go" in an aqua pool.

Again, great shots!

Phil U. · February 15, 2005

Cosmic wrote:

What fantastic shots! Looks like a very cool place to visit!

I didn't think dolphins could jump out of the water that high in a pool. I knew they could in the ocean, but I didn't think they'd have enough "go" in an aqua pool.

Again, great shots!

Thank you, and yes, it was very cool (this was the first time for me). The pool for the dolphins was pretty deep. The plexiglass was about 8 feet from the floor of the room. Then on the way out, you step down about a half floor into a smallish room under the front stage. There is a window there you can look into the pool. Then they have another room another floor down where you can look into the pool through more windows. In there you can see that the pool still goes down deeper than that floor. If I had to guess the depth of the pool, I'd say it was 30ft deep or maybe a little more (then again, I could be way off on my math

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Baltimore Aquarium

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