Sea World Part 3

Hey all, sorry for the delay in getting this up.  Its been a little off balance here lately.  Today is my catch up day on everything.  I got to do some editing last night and have some new photos to share with you all.  And it looks like I will need to do at least a part 4 if not a 5 with how many I edited last night!!  So, look for those coming soon.

Baby Gorillas are just way too cute!!!

Flamingos are a magical looking creature.  I'm not sure what it is about them - what do you think it is?

The above photo is not specially edited to have some in gray colors, that is the actual color of some of the flamingos.  I think they have not achieved their pinkness yet due to age.  I could be wrong though...

Getting photos of the killer whales is actually really hard!!  Its something I will have to go back many times to practice.  The above was taken during the Shamu show.  A lot of my photos have the trainers in them (as you can see in the below photo), which in some cases turned out already, but their absence would have been much better.  You have to be super quick with a very fast shutter speed to get the good photos.

Looks like there will be many more San Diego Zoo and Sea World photos in the coming weeks.  My current photography class has a final assignment and mine will be a sequence of photos of the animals in black and white.  I'm really excited about this assignment.  Sadly, I can not sell any of the Zoo photos due to their copyright laws - yes, even on photos I have taken - and their licensing agreements are way out of reasonability for me at this moment, but I can share them with you here.

Sea World Part 2

Another favorite part of Sea World is the Sea Lion exhibit.  You can buy a paper plate of fish to feed them. I let my husband do that part for me.  I don't like touching fish at all, I don't even like smelling or eating fish.  Just looking at the live ones!  Its so fun watching them scour for the food.  To watch the different personalities.  Some don't care at all and just hang out doing their own thing.  Some are in your face screaming for it, others hang back and give a little sign of "hey you, over here", and some do the cutest little tricks and beg with all their might.  Then there are the birds trying to steal the fish at the same time.

The above guy was just way too adorable.  He was the sitting back with a slight nod of 'hey you". He would just stick his little flipper up out of the water and wave.  Of course we had to share the fish with this cutie!

These two were so snuggled up looking just so elegant and beautiful that I had to snap a lot of shots of them and try some different editing techniques.

Can't forget the amazing Sea Turtles!

Sea World

Yesterday, we spent a long 5 hours at Sea World San Diego for our daughter's 2nd birthday.  It was a good way to spend the day, and she had fun. Though she is a tad young to really show it.

The penguin encounter was one of the last exhibits we went to.  It was a treat, an air conditioned indoor exhibit, and boy did I need the cooling off.  And my monopod stayed cold for a little while after we left to help add to my cooling down.  I could have spent hours there taking photos of them.  It was hard to get shots of them underwater with all the people there.  The exhibit has a conveyor belt in front of it and a raised platform behind that.  I had to sit on the back of the bench to raise me high enough to avoid getting people's heads in my shots.

Outside of the dolphins, my favorite animals are the Polar Bears, Walrus, and Beluga Whales.  It was very busy, so getting photos was very hard - especially the underwater ones.  I really need to go during the week when maybe its not so busy.  They are magically beautiful.  I think for our anniversary this year we are going to do the special encounter with them verse going out to eat at some boring restaurant.

I don't want to make this blog go on forever, so I will make this a numerous series like the zoo ones I did.  Look for more to come soon!

San Diego Zoo Part 3

Here are the final photos from our day at the San Diego Zoo.  I'm really looking forward and itching for our trip to Sea World this upcoming Saturday.  I will have to make sure my battery is fully charged -- something I had forgotten to do before we went to the Zoo - luckily though it didn't die on me while we were there.  I'm even considering bringing another memory card, usually I never need a backup.

The above Koala picture is another copy of one I posted in Part 2, minus fancy editing.

Don't worry that Lion is only sleeping!  She was just beautiful!  It was so overly crowded that I missed getting photos of the male Lion that was sleeping next to her.  And he gave some really good photos too.  Hopefully next time.

Here is that funny little monkey again.  He was a quick little guy.  Very hard to get still photos of him, especially getting the camera to focus on him and not the cage bars in time.  It was a fun challenge.

One of my daughter's favorite animals is the Orangutan.  There was a younger one as well that was showing off to the onlookers.  He was rolling along the ground right at the window while eating a piece of lettuce.  He rolled the whole length of the window and then disappeared.  I wish I had been able to get photos of him, but I was swapping out lenses at the time.  Luckily this guy came out for some photos.