Category Archives: Photo story

Baby Pinto Seahorse

July 9, 2008

This is a baby Pinto Seahorse captured at the National Sea life centre in Birmingham, this is an aquarium with more than 60 displays of marine and freshwater life, it also includes a one-million-litre ocean tank that house the giant  sea turtle that weigh a little over 900kgs, reef sharks and tropical reef fish.
All these ocean creatures can be viewed from a fully transparent underwater tunnel.

A unique fact about seahorses is “Its the dads who have babies”, might be a big relief for the mums!

Seahorse

Technical details:
Model                       Canon EOS 450D
Lens                         Sigma 50mm 2.8 EX DG Macro
Aperture Value         f/2.8
Focal Length            50 mm
ISO                           1600
Shutter Speed Value 1/200 sec
Flash                        No Flash
Colour Space            sRGB

Seahorses are a genus (Hippocampus) of fish belonging to the family Syngnathidae, which also includes pipefish and leafy sea dragons. There are over 32 species of seahorse, mainly found in shallow tropical and temperate waters throughout the world. They prefer to live in sheltered areas such as sea grass beds, coral reefs, or mangroves.

Seahorses are so named for their equine appearance. Although they are fish, they do not have scales, rather a thin skin stretched over a series of bony plates arranged in rings throughout their body. Each species has a distinct number of rings. Seahorses swim upright, another characteristic that is not shared by their fish relatives who swim horizontally. Seahorses have a coronet on their head, which is distinct to each seahorse, much like a human fingerprint. They swim very poorly by using a dorsal fin, which they rapidly flutter to propel them, and pectoral fins, located behind their eyes, which they use to steer. Because they are poor swimmers, they are most likely to be found resting in sea grasses or coral reefs with their prehensile tails wound around a stationary object. They have long snouts, which they use to suck up food, and eyes that can move independently of each other much like chameleon. Seahorses eat small shrimp, tiny fish and plankton.

Text above is from Wikipedia.
More informaiton available here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seahorse

Birmingham Sea life centre

http://www.sealife.co.uk/index.php

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A view of Bergen at night

June 27, 2008

Here is how Bergen looks at night.

Bergen city view Pano

Technical details:
Date/Time                                23-Mar-2008 9:21:09 PM
Focal Length                             13.80 mm
Aperture Value                          f/16
Shutter Speed Value                  75
Lens Sigma                               10-20mm
Processing : Stitched using PTGUI
White balance using Expodisc.
This photo is a 2 shot panoramic image shot using the sigma 10-20mm, i deliberately did not crop off the black regions in the foto to give it a kind of a 3D effect as if looking at a photo on a corner of a room on both the walls, i guess it works a bit here.
About the place:
This is Mount Bergen in Norway, a lovely place for some snow trek and a good city to spend a day roaming around.
The Story behind this capture:
We trekked the Bergen mountain in the morning, started by 10 and with cameras and water and bags, we started ascending, there was slight snow which was the main cause for the others to walk instead of taking a cable pull train up the hill.
The snow became heavier as we climbed and every place we could see started covering in white magic.
This view is particularly a famous view point of the Bergen city where the cable car terminates, there was no visibility at all due to the snow, then a thought lighted me up, how would the view be from this place at night, but if only the snow and cloud had to clear. Rest of the trek went fine and to my amazement the sky started to clear and the snow had stopped as we came down the mountain. All my plans were set for the night view shot.
So I started by around 8 waving off all my friends for dinner and got a ticket for the cable car, but it was only when i got into the car i came to know that was the last car for the day, but i cant miss a chance for such a lovely night scene, and i knew its going to be a long walk down the slippery snow track bacl to my place.
I set the tripod and composed the scene and started capturing the beauty with different shutter speeds to ensure i get a correct exposure. My hands were almost numb due to the biting cold of the night, so at last I have some sets of pics which i would be happy if some turned out to be keepers.
Started the descend and finally reached my hotel by 11 for a good dinner which my friends had got some take away for me.

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