Christmas, Christmas Everywhere!!

I really enjoy attractions that decorate for various holidays, particularly Halloween and Christmas.  The Long Beach Aquarium had Christmasy decor in the various exhibits and even a diver dressed as Santa - although I would argue he was much too skinny to be Santa and more like the Elf on a Shelf terror.

The lorikeets also had several Christmas trees at their disposal for hiding and pecking at.  Those little buggers bite quite readily - I didn't chance trying to buy food and taking pictures of them at the same time.  I can't wait to go back to feed them though!!

The challenge du jour was really learning to work in completely manual mode.  Since most of the exhibits are in the dark and behind shiny acrylic, I couldn't use flash and had to focus with the manual ring since there's an absurdly bright focus light that the autofocus employs.  As a result, a lot of the pictures came out pretty horrifically blurry.  In some cases, it was pretty frustrating since I know the shots would have been great had they been in focus.

In such cases, the law of large numbers to the rescue and I got some pretty awesome pictures anyway.

A nautilus, floating about its exhibit

Seahorse

And a lorikeet in a Christmas tree - long lost mysterious 13th day of Christmas gift?

Giant Pacific Octopus

Active Shooting Hours: 3
Review Hours: 3
Total Hours to Date: 92