jellies

The Mother and i went to the aquarium yesterday, and wandered around quite happily for a couple of hours. i surprised myself with some utterly amazing photos. i'm really getting into this whole digital camera thing - instant gratification = go.

the best bit, photo-wise, were the jellies - just some nice, square tanks lit from above, with black walls. this one is my favourite (click on these for larger versions... sorry about this shitty layout... i'm working on it!):

i'm really quite proud of this photo: excellent framing, perfect light, wonderful details. note the four different jellies from three different angles.

this one is also pretty good, but not quite as good as the first one.

i really like those first two pictures - they remind me of a description of aliens in an sf book (whose name i can't remember) - like angels. these fellas are about half the length of your forearm (the bigger ones).

and here's one more:

those ones were inverse, or upside-down jellies (i forget which). they remind me of fractal art.

they were hard to photograph as they were moving about. the smaller they were, the faster the water was moving in their tank.

here are a couple of examples of how things went wrong:
some scary colour and a quick-moving subject:

and some well-lit, but again quick-moving jellies

there were also lots of little bits in the water, to make things even trickier... there were also tanks of teenyweeny jellies (little bubbas) where they looked exactly the same as the larger ones, just smaller.

this one is the one The Mother liked the most - she has decided that the dig is AOK and that mucking about taking stupid photos is even better. this photo is interesting, because we've not used a flash. the tank (which i'm standing in front of) was lit from within. when we used a flash, we looked like we were standing in front of a big poster. mmm-mmm.

just to brag: i've not actually cropped or changed anything about any of these photos except the size (by half or so), and the very first is just a bit of the first nice one cut out to introduce this stuff.
i am feeling most smug.
and also reminding you not to reproduce these without permission. :)