Monterey Bay Aquarium

April 25, 2009

On the last day of our vacation earlier this week we headed down to Cannery Row in Monterey Bay. Cannery Row is a very interesting place full of shops, restaurants and of course the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We got to the aquarium when it first opened and since it was a Monday we figured it wouldn’t be so busy. Well it happened to be “locals get in free” day so the place was actually packed. We have visited this aquarium before back in 2006 for our one year anniversary but back then we only had a little Canon point-and-shoot so we didn’t get any fantastic photos. This time I took the Mark II while Bryan used the XTi. I was debating which lens I would use for this occasion. I couldn’t really decide if I wanted the 24-105 F4L which would give me macro and zoom capabilities but would not allow me to really open up the aperture or the 50mm F1.8 which didn’t allow me to zoom or do macro but allowed for a more open aperture. Ultimately I chose to use both, I just put one lens on my camera and the other on Bryan’s and constantly switched off. I used the 24-105 F4L for mostly wide angle shots such as stuff we took outdoors or huge tanks. When the light was really low I just bumped up the ISO, I shot a lot at ISO 4000-5000 but there were moments when I as shooting up to 25,000 ISO. I tried to use the 50mm 1.8 the most in really low light situations however, there were times where it was too dark for the camera to figure out what I was trying to focus on so it wouldn’t take the photo. In that case I just switched my camera to video mode and took a movie. I love the Mark II. 

While we were at the aquarium we got to see the new exhibit titled “The Secret Lives of Seahorses”. This was by far my favorite part of the aquarium since I love sea horses. They are just so cute with their little fishy horse faces and curly tails. Another one of my favorite things we saw was the sea otters. We didn’t get to see them the last time we went to this aquarium and they are definitely fun to watch. I also liked seeing the Octopus in the Ocean’s Edge section which is a darker area of the aquarium. I want to take a quick moment and talk about about people who photograph the tanks inside the aquarium. There are usually specific places, the octopus tank being one of them, where it says not to use flash photography. I choose to abide by the rule of never using flash on any indoor tank, I don’t appreciate a flash bulb flashing in my face and I assume fish don’t like this either. This is why I take advantage of high ISO’s and fast lenses when going to the aquarium. Flash photography at an aquarium doesn’t make that much sense either, if you use your flash to take a picture of a fish in a tank chances are your flash is going to bounce off the tank and cause a huge blown out area in your picture. So please don’t flash the fish. Okay rant over.

We made it through the aquarium pretty quickly and walked back down Cannery Row where we took a few photos of ourselves overlooking the ocean. You’ll notice off to the left of the picture of us is a restaurant called The Fish Hopper, we decided to eat there before our very long drive home. On our way back to our car Bryan found a candy store where he stocked up on salt water taffy and got some chocolate covered gummy bears. He was like a kid in a….well you know.

For more of our photos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium check out our GALLERY.
Monterey Bay

Monterey Bay

Sea Otter

Sea Otter

Jellyfish Tank

Jellyfish Tank

Sea Horse

Sea Horse

Bryan and Jamie

Bryan and Jamie

Left: Jamie Right: Outer Bay

Left: Jamie Right: Outer Bay

Left: Kelp Forest Right: Ocean's Edge

Left: Kelp Forest Right: Ocean's Edge

Jellyfish

Jellyfish

Sea Horse

Sea Horse

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Photographics: Infrared

April 23, 2009

One of the more interesting assignments we were given this semester was to turn in an infrared assignment. This could be be done in one of three ways; shoot a roll of infrared film, shoot infrared digitally with various filters or create a infrared image in Photoshop. We opted not to shoot a roll of infrared film for a couple of reasons. One reason is that Bryan’s Canon A2E will not shoot infrared (more on that later). My old Pentax camera did have the ability to shoot infrared film however if you know anything about IR film you know that it is very sensitive. You have to load the film in the camera in complete darkness. Doing anything in complete darkness is not a skill I have, except for loading film onto a spool for development. I also played around in GIMP trying to create a IR image out of a regular color image, while the results were passable they just weren’t infraredy enough. I know infraredy is not a word neither was ginormous a few years ago. We chose to do the assignment digitally however our Mark II doesn’t have the ability to shoot infrared. The majority of Canon SLR’s can not because of a low pass filter that Canon installs in their camera’s to get sharper images. Canon Film SLR camera use an infrared light to see the notches in the film so it would fog infrared film. During the class lecture on infrared Lanoue mentioned that the Canon G9 had the capability to shoot in IR. This was great since my coworker happened to have a G9 that he let us borrow. We had to by an infrared filter for it but that was much less than if we would have had to buy the G9. 

Since infrared works best on foliage we decided to go to Chino Hills State Park. The wildflowers have just started to bloom like crazy over there so it was perfect. When taking an IR shot the camera must be on a tripod because of the long shutter speeds needed to capture the image. Most of our images were at F8 with a shutter speed between 1-4 seconds. If you take IR images digitally the look red when you see them in your cameras preview. You have to take the files into a photo editing program (we used GIMP) and desaturated it. Plus you usually have to mess with the contrast a little bit to get the image just right. The other thing we had to correct for is the noise level in the photos. We found that the G9 doesn’t have great long shutter speed noise performance even at ISO 80-100 which is what we took these shots in. Below are the images Bryan and I shot for our assignment.
Photo by Jamie

Photo by Jamie

Photo by Bryan

Photo by Bryan

Photo by Jamie

Photo by Jamie

Photo by Bryan

Photo by Bryan

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Picture of the Week 4-22-2009

April 22, 2009

This week’s photo is a shot that Bryan took at the Sea Otter Classic. The photo shows a Downhill competitor in mid-air speeding down the hill. I really like that Bryan caught the exact moment where the cyclist jumped. Also I love the leading lines, he did a great job on the composition. This is one of thousands of photos we took at the Sea Otter Classic so check back soon to see our gallery of photos of the entire event.

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Photo Info: Taken with the 5D Mark II with 70-200mm F4L lens. ISO 400, F8 at 1/2000 of a second.

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Picture of the Week 4-8-2009

April 8, 2009

This past weekend Bryan and I had a class field trip originally set to be in Limestone Canyon. Those plans ended up falling through so professor LaNoue took us instead to nearby Silverado Canyon. Silverado Canyon is a popular place for hiking and mountain biking. LaNoue originally wanted us to go on a more level trail which Silverado is not. We only walked up for a little while before we decided to turn around. As far as scenery goes Silverado Canyon is bleak, there aren’t many wildflowers but you do get nice views of the canyon when you go up further on the trail. This week’s photo is one that Bryan took as we were going down the trail. A couple mountain bikers road by us on the way down which I have to say is pretty crazy since the trail has a lot of loose rocks. We ended up having a nice time photographing and got some exercise too.

silverado002

Photo Info: Taken with our 5D Mark II at ISO 200, F8 and 1/800 of a second.

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Picture of the Week 4-1-2009

April 1, 2009

This week’s photo is a shot that Bryan took during our photo hike through Chino Hills State Park. Well actually I hiked and he rode his mountain bike. It has been about 4 months since the fire burned 90% of the park. The only evidence of the fire are a few charred trees but the wildflowers have really grown like crazy and made for beautiful landscape shots. I like the photo that Bryan chose of burned tree in front of a wall of yellow wildflowers. What a great place to photograph.

To see more pictures of Chino Hills State Park, check out our GALLERY.

img_2157

Photo Info: Shot with our 5D Mark II. ISO 160, F9, at 1/250 of a second.

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Photographics: Applied Color

March 27, 2009

For our second assignment in our class LaNoue had us do applied color. Applied color or hand coloring is where you take a black & white print and color over it with colored pencils, water colors, oils or pastels. In theory, this assignment can be really fun because it brings you back to the days of childhood and coloring books. However, it’s way harder than it looks, at least that is what we found. We chose to color our prints with water color pencils. We used fiber based prints that we had created in our previous zone systems class and for a few hours we hunched over our prints and colored away.   
The thing with water color pencils is that they produce more saturated colors than pastels. Having this in mind I put very light layers of color on my prints, however when I finally applied the water to the color via Q-tip I was surprised to see my color all but disappear. I added another layer of color and instead of wiping the Q-tip across I gently blotted it to get the effect I was looking for. My first print of Red Rock Canyon was pretty easy however, my second print turned out to be more frustrating. My second print of North Lake had a lot sky in the photo which I tried to color blue but I could never get it to blend properly which is why it looks uneven. I still like the pink and yellow flowers in the foreground which I think made the print effective. 
Red Rock Canyon by Jamie

Red Rock Canyon by Jamie

North Lake by Jamie

North Lake by Jamie

Bryan also had a hard time with his print of the bush. It took him a long time to color because he chose to fill in every single leaf. He also put the color down darker with the pencil and then only slightly blended it with the water which made the leaves really pop out of the print. He then decided to color in the sky by using a technique that LaNoue suggested which was to wet the photo paper first and then add in the color. This made the blues in the sky very saturated, almost like an ocean. He worked into the night to correct for the over saturation. Still after seeing the finished product I think his print is an excellent example of applied color.
Desert by Bryan

Desert by Bryan

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