The Living Seas is something of a frustrating building for me. Even just in the small cylindrical tanks they have a great many fascinating animals that I'd just love to get pictures of. But, being cylindrical, they seem prone to causing terrible chromatic abberation (uneven bending of different colors of light, causing objects to appear haloed). The thing is I never see the effect with my eyes, either my brain just ignores it or else somehow camera optics are more sensitive to this. And then there's an open water exhibit which has a number of stingrays, among other things. One species of ray has incredible blue spots which I REALLY wanted to capture.. but all I got were a couple of blurry pictures of it, perhaps caused by the rippling of the surface of the water. So here's three shots. Two of which I think are decent, one is meant to showcase the frustrating abberations. The cuttlefish and the clownfish were both in cylindrical tanks, the jelly's enclosure has a flat face that's much nicer for sharp captures, but there's very little hard edges in there, most of the jellyfish are smooth toned and rounded, the only hard detail I could get was from the threadlike structures that trail behind the edges of the body. First off we have a cuttlefish. I find this to be a fascinating animal. Unfortunately they weren't interested in showcasing their amazing color changing ability for me. But still they're captivating even when they're not moving and just staring at you (or at least appearing to, they have an unusual eye structure that makes it hard to tell where they're looking). Then the jellyfish, a perennial favorite. The zoo near me used to have a jellyfish exhibit, but it's been replaced by something else and they've been promising that they're working on a replacement jelly exhibit for a while now. I'm eagerly anticipating the return. And finally the poor blurred clownfish. I swear, with my eyes it looked fantastic. I kept thinking that the next shot had to be a winner, then I'd take it and review it on the screen and sure enough, it was blurred. I had pictures of all sorts of things. Rays, seahorses, yellow tangs (which I found out have a pair of poisonous spines on either side of their tail, which was interesting because I'd noticed that structure earlier at a Rainforest Cafe and was wondering if it was a sign of illness, like an infection), all far too blurry to work with. Still great to see in person though.
