dress matches the live coral... nice.

Great picture, great colors. Trixie gets to go on lots of fun trips! How do you manage the exposure so that both Trixie and the aquarium are visible? Whenever I try this, either the fish or the kid are too dark.

How precious...I love how she's holding onto Mom's (?) hands. Fish amaze me, too. I have that same look on my face when I go to the aquarium.

I love the lighting (or lack thereof) in this one! Very nice!

Hi Nadine,
The key is turning off the flash. That gives you natural colors. The problem is that you either have to have a very long exposure (several seconds) to let enough light into the camera or you have to use more sensitive film (the higher ISO setting if you are using a digital camera).

In this case I used the more sensitive 'film' (the ISO 400 setting) and a slow shutter speed (1/30 second). The trade-off is that the picture is very grainy because the camera can't capture as much detail at the higher ISO.

Hope this helps a little :)

The boys look JUST like this when I take them to an aquarium. Its more of the "ohh gosh" look than the interested look, I mean how would you feel if all of a sudden you looked up to find a distorted sky with a bunch of "flying" animals overhead... and not understand that what separates you is 3 inch thick glass? I feel nervous at aquariums as well, something like what if all the water caved in, and looking at aquariums makes me dizzy, the image looks wierd through the glass... but the boys LOVE it, especially walking too close the the glass, and getting their hand prints on it while trying to get the fishes attention... LOVE the lighting as well (you know what I mean by "lighting") and Trixie just looks so young in this picture, great shot Ben!

The trixie update is great. A fish story you might like. A number of years ago I was riding the subway, the PATH, that goes under the Hudson River. It was take your children to work day so I gave my seat to a little girl, who proceeded to peer intensely through the window. I glanced over at her Father and asked what she was looking for. The little girl hear me tuned and said one word: "fish".

My children are grown and gone but in the next several months I will be a granddad twice over

Again thank for the site, your princess makes me smile and brings tears to my eyes athe same time.

Jumped back to the year-ago photo and the change in her looks is remarkable! So here I am, remarking on it.

Benmac...there is a whale shark at the new Georgia Aquarium by the name of Trixie. Maybe you could take Trixie to see a fish named Trixie. :-)

This link has a video of Trixie. Check it out:

http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/