A Day at the Georgia Aquarium

Before I begin, let me first offer an apology for not posting in so long.  Every time I put a post up I fully intend to be more consistent and periodic with them - and then work gets in the way and I don't post for a month.  

Well, between wrapping up my work in Korea and moving back to the US, I sort of fell off the wagon and its been like 6-months.  All I can say is: my bad...  With that being said, however, my schedule will be much more relaxed for the next 6-months and I should be able to do regular posts. 

Now that we have moved passed the housekeeping items, let me share our day at the Georgia Aquarium.  From a photographic perspective, I have always found shooting at aquariums difficult due to the incredibly low light.  The aquariums are fairly well illuminated as far as the human eye is concerned, but not so much for the camera.  On this visit, I did experiment and pushed my 5d mk II's ISO / low light capabilities by pushing some of the images up to 3200 ISO.     

I was markedly impressed with its abilities to capture usable photos at such high ISOs.  Yes, they are grainy - but quite usable.  I did utilize the noise reduction features in Light Room and tried to find that balance of reducing noise without softening the images too much.   

The other challenge with this shooting at the aquarium is white balancing.  They use a mix of light sources and types that make it very difficult to balance in post.  I do the best I can, but always feel that I can't quite get rid of some of the tints.