manta watching
January 11, 2006
On New Year’s Eve, on the way back to the island, I met up with Teru and also Ivan — my pre-predecessor, and the first JET teacher on my island (I was the third). Since we had some time before the ferry, we went to the Okinawa Chura-umi Aquarium. I’ve been there quite a few times before, but this was the first time with my new SLR. I wish I’d had more time and it had been less crowded, but I still got a couple of nice shots. Here is a lady watching a manta from a table in the aquarium café.
Posted by graeme — January 24, 2006 at 1:44 pm
waaaaaaaah! i think that`s the best photo i`ve ever seen!!
Posted by lva — January 25, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Ach, though… the best photo ever was the one I just missed. I had to crop this tightly and tweak the perspective a bit in photoshop to save it. If I’d only been standing slightly further back to have the sides of the window sloping upwards either side to show the perspective I might have had the best photo ever… but my angle was wonky and I clipped the edges off. Doh!
Actually, I have half a dozen photos that are also almost brilliant, but in all of them someone stood up or walked past just at the critical moment, blotting out a critical part of the picture with their stupid great out-of-focus head. I only had five minutes left before we had to leave, see, and I’d still got half the aquarium left, so was just running around snapping like a madman.
Before I leave Okinawa, I’m going to go back there one weekday morning when there aren’t too many people, and I can take as much time as I like waiting for nice shots…