Once again, a backlog has built up. I really need to find a better workflow for exporting my photos after trips. For all of the ills mobile phones may have brought onto society1, the ease for taking and sharing photos from our phones remains paramount.
Back on June 22nd, I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium with my mom. She was more excited for the visit than me, but since her expectations were so high, she came out of the trip disappointed. Unfortunately, she had an unrealistic view of how magnificent in size the aquarium would be, so when we arrived and it was a much more constrained layout, she felt let down. The amount of people who was there on that Saturday did not help. There were so many people there, it was the only negative part that I felt took away from the experience.
We started the day with lunch at one of the nearby restaurants overlooking the bay. Then we walked around a bit before we lined up to get into the aquarium. The line was pretty long, but it moved surprisingly fast.
Hands down, the most popular exhibit was the main jellyfish tank. There were so many people gathered around in the dark room, only illuminated by the natural glow of the jellyfish, that I could not take a clear photo of just the jellyfish tank.
I had a much better time taking photos of the tiny jellyfish that did not attract as much attention. The photos I took look as if they were of micro-organisms under a microscope. The best part was that the lighting and colors could only be captured by an actual camera; smartphone cameras do too much auto adjustments2 to try to “brighten” the low light scene.
Finally, the most joy was brought by the sea otter tank. I can say I now get the appeal of them. The way they glide through the water and play with their toys are truly charming.
Unfortunately I didn’t get too many pictures, but their charm was infectious enough I wanted to buy a sea otter plush at the gift shop. However, the cutest plush was too large for what I wanted, and the smaller one wasn’t as appealing, so I ended up getting a tiny keychain plush from one of the typical tourist stores outside of the aquarium.
For this trip, I switched to using a neck strap for my camera, paired with a 7L sling and the combination worked really well. This setup definitely made it easier to pull my camera out and had much less friction than when I used a wrist strap and stowed my camera in my backpack mostly.
Footnotes
- I’ve complained about this to enough friends I’ve turned into an absolute grump about it. The way smartphones have changed the way we “socialize” and the it destroys our attention spans is something I find deeply concerning for our society’s future. I, too, am distracted by it. ↩︎
- This is actually one of the primary reasons I bought my camera. Before that, I technically had a point-and-shoot camera when I was in school, before smartphone cameras were good enough, but the focus stopped working so I relied on my phone for photos every since. Due to the way smartphone cameras would try to auto adjust and process images, I was never happy with how it captured colors, especially in low-light or room light settings. The color was never true to what you see with your eyes. ↩︎
