Copyright © 2014 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved

Since it was supposed to be a rainy Saturday my friend Dali and I headed to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  We met early at a favorite coffee shop then drove a little over an hour south to get there just before the Aquarium opened. We anticipated a big crowd; it being a Saturday, and rainy. There was already a line to purchase tickets when we arrived.

We headed straight for the Jellyfish tanks since those are very popular, but we got side-tracked by the scuba-divers in the BIG tanks. They were cleaning the glass, and both little and big kids found them fun to watch.

…and now for some fish!

There are two Octopi here. This top one is the smaller of the two. They’re both pretty large.

This bottom one is enormous!

This Stingray came out of the deep blue and looked so graceful and hypnotic swimming through the tank.

Finally we got to the Jellyfish! I have a lot of Jellyfish images to go through, but here’s one of my favorites.

By noon the Aquarium was pretty crowded, so we headed to the cafe for lunch. I didn’t take any foodie images, but I did take a photo of the entrance to the Cafe. I liked the lines, and color contrast.

Then we went back upstairs to find some animals and fish we missed earlier. I’ll be working on those images soon, but here’s one gem we found. Isn’t it pretty!

It was a tricky venue to shoot because most the tanks were dark and back-lit. In addition to that the lights in the halls and galleries were pointing into the tanks which caused reflections of the bulbs, and  glare on the tank glass, also there were reflections of the people, and the room on the glass. To clean up the images I cloned out some of the light reflections, and the worst of the muck that was floating in the tanks.

I used a Nikon D700 with a AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lens, and to keep the shutter speed up my ISO varied between 1000-2500. I used a little noise reduction in a few of these images.

It had been many years since my last visit. I really shouldn’t wait so long between visits.