Alien landscapes and a (mostly) unrelated story

First the story... (Or if I bore you, just skip to the photos.)
I had to work yesterday (Sunday) but I knew it wouldn't take too long. So I decided to pack my camera gear in one of my bike panniers. I get to work and sure enough, it only takes a couple of hours. I decided to take a long ride and figured I'd bike around the sea wall at Stanley Park. It had been years since I've biked all the way around. I get more than half-way (very easy ride and I had to slow down a lot due to slower riders and lack of opportunity to pass them) and decide to stop for a snack. I find a spot with some benches and potential for some good shots. I park my butt on the bench, shoot a few pictures (nothing worth posting - not horrible, just bland), then open up a protein bar. (Not the gross Power Bars. It was more like a dense rice crispie bar smothered in chocolate.) I start eating it slowly, just enjoying the view. I see a kid through a break in the wall and he glances at me and moves on. Moments later, he walks up to me (he found a good place to climb up from the beach to the bench area), grabs the protein bar from my hand and takes a bite. I'm puzzled but kids are definitely unpredictable... The mother comes up and apologizes (while trying to hold back laughter) and tells the kid "that's not daddy". She sees I'm amused rather than bothered and tells me that she told her son to find his dad and to look for the blue and silver jacket, which of course, is the colour of my biking jacket (the father's jacket was actually darker). At this point, we're both laughing while she's trying to lightly scold her kid (it's hard to seriously scold when you're laughing). The father at this point has also come over and is laughing as well (and trying to scold his kid and is as successful as his wife).
Anyways, they get on their way, and I stay for a while longer. I finish the ride around and found it far too short so I popped in to the aquarium to snap a few shots.

Here are some "alien landscapes" from the aquarium...










And a couple of coral shots

What an odd thing to happen!
I like your aquarium photos, especially the coral ones. The beam of light highlighting the coral and the fish is very good.

It took a bit of fiddling with the exposure settings to get the beam of light bright enough without completely blowing out the pink coral. I do wish the pink coral was a bit darker, though. Ah well, I'm still happy with the shot.

I really hope people will post a few "alien landscapes" so others will find the theme less objectionable. I love the black on blue coral and the little white sea anemenoes. I hope somebody chooses it as a theme in the future.

Interesting coincidence, on Saturday I was photographing NASA's Dr. Kevin Hand as he showed the movie "Aliens of the Deep" (by Avatar director James Cameron), that was a combination of scientists and photographers working together at the bottom of the ocean.

Here's a shot of Kevin answering audience questions:



The movie was absolutely fascinating, but the commentary from one who participated was even better; from a photographer's point of view in particular! For example, he commented on how different it was than a purely scientific research mission, where photography is always a secondary effort that occasionally produced results, while in this case it was the primary purpose. He described using the arm of a submersible to reach out to take a sample of something really interesting, only at the last second to be told to drop what he was doing and move over behind something else to shine a backlight on some object for the photographers in the other submersible. (Ya gotta love that kind of priority!)

This is a URL to a "preview" clip of the movie.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2830434585/

And also in the end there is a significant amount of animation. Note in the preview there is one snippet of a female scientist imagining to touch hands through the bubble with a very alien looking being... but it's animation of course.

And at one point a huge (several feet in length) squid shot up right in front of the window that Kevin was looking through. In the movie he exclaims: "Oh my god, look at that squid!" In real life he said rest assured that was not what he said.

Dr. Hand is in Barrow to study how scientists can detect and analyze living things in ice or in water underneath ice. Seems his rocket has a schedule with Europa, a moon of Jupiter, that has miles of ice over what they believe is a huge ocean of water (2-1/2 times the water in all of our oceans combined). (NASA has tested various robots here too, none of which seemed to work too well so we are always amazed when they land one that doesn't fail in the first two hours on Mars.)

I'll have to check it out. I looked up a few reviews and they seem to be all over the place. I doubt many of those reviewers were into photography so it's quite possible I'll get more out of it than the average viewer.

I hope we do get an opportunity to do "Alien Landscapes" one of these months. Our undersea world is truly alien as these pictures show.

I think there are a lot of "alien" landscapes around us. Just a change in perspective is required. Without an aquarium to get undersea shots, there are probably a lot of alien landscapes that can be captured by shooting close to the ground, in the tangle of a bush, etc. The undersea world is definitely very alien.
If we ever do "Alien Landscapes", I think I have my photo already picked out - and it's not one of these (and takes much more liberty with the theme than these do).

I'm knocked out by each and everyone of them. Great job! :hi:

I have some more shots from the aquarium I'll probably post in the next few days but these are the only good "landscape" ones I got.