Maritime Aquarium Trip

My nephew loves marine life, squids of the giant variety in particular, so we took a trip down to Norwalk to check out the Maritime Aquarium. We went later in the day which was nice because there weren't a lot of people there. The downside was that most of the animals were already sleeping for the day. The kids didn't seem to mind at all and it showed me the super cool eye cover that the green tree frog has when it sleeps, seen above.

The jelly displays are super cool and really nicely lit which made for fun photos.

 

 

 

James also loves the lion fish, so I made sure to take a bunch of photos for him.

 

Meerkat slumber party.

 

We trapped Grandma in the shark cage.

While the sharks were resting, the rays still swam by for a few touches.

 The harbor seals were tuckered out after their last feeding of the day.

Nature Hodgepodge

In an attempt to get through my back log of photos, I've organized them into themes. This is the set of nature/flowers I've taken during the spring and summer. One of the best surprises of my shooting calendar photo challenge is how I've learned to love some of my lenses. The majority of these were taken with the Beast, my 35-350mm lens with a close up filter. It actually enlarges things more than my macro lens. I've really embraced manual focusing, which eliminates a lot of the issues the lens has.

An incredible storm rolled in while I was at the office one day and I was lucky enough to have my camera with me.

These are some detail shots of our night blooming cereus plant. Technically, it's a cactus, but it doesn't have any spines. It grows these gigantic flowers that open for one night and fill the house with the scent of vanilla. It's really amazing.

I decided to try my hand at some back yard nature photography. I attached my 2X converter to the 35-350mm lens, making it a 700mm lens at the far end. You have to manually focus with the converter on, so I got some more practice on that. Quite the feeding frenzy with the sparrows.

Finally, I cat sat for my old roommate and she has the most amazing garden and homegrown veggies. I didn't enhance the colors at all, they really pop this much!