Jacob Maentz’s Blog

I went to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga this past Monday with a good friend I haven’t seen in a long time. Wally Van Sickle and Sean Kelly from IDEA WILD were in town attending the Society for Conservation Biology annual conference. IDEA WILD purchased equipment for the winners who participated in the Conservation Leadership program. The Conservation Leadership winners were attending this conference and the reason why Wally and Sean came to Chattanooga. I’ve been living about an hour from Chattanooga for the past three months and this worked out great, because I haven’t seen Wally in over four years. The last time we saw each other was in El Nido, Palawan doing some diving.

We had a day to hang out and we decided to go to the Tennessee Aquarium to see all the critters there. We were all very impressed with the quality and design of the aquarium. One of the best aquariums I have been to. It was also nice to see on display many of the native species to Tennessee and the Cumberland Plateau.

I thought I would share with you some images I took at the aquarium. I would recommend a visit to this aquarium if you are in the area.

I have been working on a project this past week photographing a newly built Log House in eastern Tennessee. The house actually belongs to my dad and his wife and is a beautiful home. The project manager asked me to photograph the final built house for advertising purposes, etc and I have had a lot of fun with it. It’s hard trying to be creative with a subject like this, but it is possible. I tried to showcase the house in it’s beautiful surrounding environment and focus on the details of the interior. I believe I have captured what the project manager was looking for and pleased myself in knowing I can still let the creative juices flow on a project like this.

I was able to use the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS) for the inside of the house and I am learning more and more about the power of this system. There are many sites out there that have great resources for the CLS including the Strobist and Joe Mcnally’s Blog. I hope to blog more about Nikon’s CLS in the future with some tutorials, etc.

For now, I have included a few pictures here to show what I have been working on. A little bit of Photoshop, yes. Some NIK filters were used for the outside color image and I added the moon for the evening shot. Actually, the moon was there while I was shooting the image, however, I wasn’t able to get a sharp picture of it to use. I was borrowing a tripod and it was really shaky…invest in a sturdy tripod if you plan to shoot at night! I can’t wait to get my tripod back.

Let me know what you think of the images.