I took Chloe to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach this morning. It’s a perfect day. 80-degrees and sunny (by the beach, not inland where I live!), with a light breeze coming off the ocean. Having watched Finding Nemo 40teen zillion times in the last 6 months, the aquarium was just the ticket for today.

I decided to keep it simple in the picture-taking department today and just used my new Canon point-and-shoot. I find that I sometimes concentrate too much on the technical stuff of my camera and not enough on teaching and interacting with Chloe when I bring the SLR. But it worked out beautifully, because my compact camera actually has an Aquarium setting! Using the “Scene” function on my camera, I was able to select the Aquarium preset for ideal shooting. Basically, the camera sets itself for a very high ISO (fast “film” speed), and a somewhat quick shutter speed to capture fast-swimming fish.

Here are some tips for shooting successful pictures at the aquarium…

1) If your camera has an “Aquarium” setting, use it! If not, set your camera to a high ISO, such as 800 or higher, and a shutter speed of at least 1/60 of a second.

2) Don’t forget to turn off the flash. A flash will usually highlight the glass and not the fish.

3) Be patient. Aquariums are usually lit with splashes of light to best resemble the lighting conditions in the ocean or a riverbed. I found that waiting for the fish to swim into the puddles of light yielded the best results. You might need to take a number of pictures in each environment to get the best focus and lighting conditions for each fish. I came back a number of times to the jellyfish tank because they kept swimming away from the light. With a little patience, I was able to get some cool, well-lit shots.

4) When shooting something fast like a seal or a dolphin, try panning the camera along with the animal and press the shutter button during your pan. This takes a little practice, but you can get really cool shots this way. You can also try anticipating where the seal will be and hold your camera in that position until they swim into frame, then quickly press the shutter button.

5) Don’t forget to shoot your kids marveling at all the cool fishes!

6) When shooting wide shots, try an unusual angle. For this shot, I got very low and close to the glass, zoomed out all the way, and pointed the camera very high to the top of the tank. This gave an exaggerated, bottom-of-the-ocean look.

For more aquarium pics, click here.