Lake Pleasant Arizona October 2020

A lovely day in the desert this October day, with temperatures in the lower 80s.   This is the marina at Lake Pleasant, a man-made lake in Peoria, Arizona, just a few miles to the northwest of Phoenix.   

Just outside of Dillon's restaurant (by the way, I am addicted to their barbecue beans) there was a water slide tower.   I captured a few images of people going off that thing.

Today's purpose was to take the naturalists boat cruise around the lake.   Lots of things to learn.   

There is fishing in the lake.   There is bass and what we called panfish from my youth in Michigan.   

On the shoreline on the north side of the lake has wild burros.   The tour guide said those burros are the descendants of gold miners from a hundred years ago or more.   When the gold ran out, the miners left everything there including their animals.  

And, we are in the Sonoran Desert, so the shoreline also had a number of saguaros.   

Until My Next Adventure,

See you on down the road,

Jim Patterson

View the entire collection of images by clicking HERE!

Odysea Aquarium 3 October 2020

Odysea Aquarium is located on the north side of Scottsdale Arizona.   I've been here before and it is a fascinating place to visit, especially since it brings the ocean to the Sonoran Desert.

I specifically visited at 9am on 3 October to capture images to enter a photowalk contest sponsored by Kelby.  

Here is the photo I entered in the contest....  

If you plan to visit Odysea or any other aquarium to photograph, a little pre-planning can save you time and frustration.   

Lighting is usually dark'ish with various colors coming in.   One less thing to worry about is the ISO setting, so I set it to "auto ISO."   You are going to have photos with very high ISO and that may mean some grain, so in post processing, you might have to control that.   

Today I used a Canon 24-240mm lens opened all the way, which let in the most amount of light.   I was living in f/4 for that lens.   My camera body is the Canon EOS R.   Other lenses I could have used include the Canon 50mm f/1.4, the Canon 24-105mm, or the Tamron 24-70mm.  

Do I have to say it?  NO FLASH.  It won't do you any good anyway and it will cause security to either ask you to stop or leave the aquarium.  

No tripods.  Don't even try it.   Especially if you go during their busy hours.   I went at 9am when they first opened, so there were few people there.   I'd also try two hours before their closing.    

You will be shooting through glass and into water, plus the sea creatures are liking going to be moving.   This could create havoc with your auto focusing.   So take several shots of the same thing.   I took in total about 158 shots and kept only 51.  Nothing much you can do with an out of focus image except hit the delete key. 

Frame your photo and watch for distractions in the background.   In this case, there are reflections from other lights in the area, like red "exit" signs!   So move your feet around to minimize these distractions.  As careful as I was, I still found these pesky reflections in the images I captured.   I used "content aware fill" in Photoshop to take care of most of these issues.  

I shot in "raw" format.   I post processed in Lightroom and Photoshop (mostly to get rid of distractions) and often used Luminar 4 to give the images a bit more pop.   

Until My Next Adventure,

See you on down the road,

Jim Patterson

Click HERE or on the photo below to view all of the images from Odysea Aquarium!