Brian Moran HDR Photography: Sea World San Antonio Christmas Celebration

So not only did I post two photos today, here is a three-pack of Sea World San Antonio photos for your enjoyment (well, four-pack if you count the "Azul" photo which I posted earlier today). As always, you can click on the pictures and see the image up to the "X3" size. I hope you enjoy the photos!

Earlier today I put up a processed photo of "Azul" at Sea World San Antonio that was accentuated by the lights that have been placed for the annual Christmas Celebration. I originally had planned on going downtown tonight to get some photos of the lighting of the Christmas lights and the Ford Holiday River Parade, but I decided to stay home and process these photos and head downtown tomorrow instead. There are two benefits to tomorrow, the first being not nearly as many people will likely be downtown and it is not supposed to be as windy as tonight, so the longer exposure needed to capture the night shots should be less blurry (as you can tell from several of the trees in the background of my Sea World shots, the wind can make the photos look even more surreal than normal).

Anyway, the first photo is of the Southwest Airlines sponsored Penguin display, my wife and I must have visited Sea World 10 times and I don't recall ever being there during "day" time (the display is setup to replicate their natural habitat, so the daylight here in San Antonio does not usually correspond to daylight in Antarctica. I took this shot with a zoom lens, purposely trying to focus past all of the water that is splashed up on the glass. You can still see some of it if you look hard enough, but I think I managed to clean up a majority of the water droplets that detracted from the shot.

The second picture is my favorite actual display that I saw as I walked around the park. Just past the Steel Eel there is a display of about 10 "snowmen" in various activities. I like this scene the most although it took me about 10 minutes to decide on the vantage point that I wanted for the shot. I ended up setting the tripod (unextended) up near the pylon so I could see the quarterback, the poor receiver, and the ball smacking into the pylon. You would not think this setup would be a difficult one to take, but when you take into account you need three separate subjects and the perfect vantage point to see the hole in the receiver, it becomes a challenge to get the shot. In the background you can see the track for the Steel Eel as well as another snowman display on a skateboard.

The third shot is of the Christmas tree that you see as soon as you enter the park. Once again you can see from the top of the trees (and the star on the top of the Christmas tree too!) that it was extremely windy. I ever so slightly desaturated the background trees to try to get the main Christmas tree to stand out a little bit more. I think I am going to try to take this shot again just as the sun is setting (or shortly thereafter). I think that will make the tree stand out a bit more and taking the shot again when the treetops are not blurred due to the wind will probably make the shot look completely different as well.

Penguin display at Sea World San Antonio