So here’s a quick gallery I threw together after sifting through all the photos from Seaside. The only really fun thing photography-wise was when we first arrived, we decided to check out this kitschy aquarium on the beach front. Typically when people go to this sort of exhibit and get photos, they’ll produce one of two outcomes: They either go in thinking “It’s dark in here, I should turn my flash on” (or their camera decides that for them) and they get a bunch of photos of flash reflections, or they decide “It’s dark in here, I’m going to crank the ISO” (again, the camera might decide this for them) and they come home with a bunch of really grainy shots. I opted for cranking my ISO, since the larger sensor handles the grain quite a bit better than a point and shoot. Most of the time we were in there, I shot wide open, high ISO stuff. Then I realized I had a flash in my bag with me.

Okay, so with on-camera flash, you can’t shoot things behind glass. But if you can get it off your camera, you can get the flash right up against the glass and place the camera’s lens elsewhere, eliminating the glare problem. I started pressing my flash up against the glass and either bouncing the light off the back wall of the aquariums or off the underside of the surface of the water to illuminate whatever was inside. I didn’t get to shoot long with this technique, because everybody was pretty bored with the aquarium by the time I figured it out, but I got a couple kinda neat shots, especially considering they were taken behind scratched, fingerprinted, dirty glass that’s probably been there for 50 years.

From left to right: 1: The aquarium’s poster. It felt very carnival freak show to me. I liked it. 2: A wolf eel (high ISO). 3: A sea anemone (flash). 4: Another ugly fish (flash). 5: One of the many stores I didn’t go into. 6: A cheap place to get your animal cut/plugged, apparently. 7: Nina playing Dreamcast-era arcade games. 8: Life guard thing. 9: Seagull. 10: Blahblah.