LoveLife2012 at California Academy of Sciences for 7×7 Magazine

Last Thursday I had the honor of shooting the LoveLife photo contest awards ceremony at the California Academy of Sciences Night Life event for 7x7 Magazine. This was especially exciting for me because I personally entered 20 photos and was really curious to find out which photos won! Here are some photos from the evening... There were people walking around with iPads, where you could vote for your favorite "People's Choice" photo. Something I never saw before was the live scientists in action... I don't think they were ever there before when I went ...basically there were scientists who were preparing specimens for display. SO COOL!  The woman above was preparing some doves and an owl. There was someone else working on a penguin, and I'm not sure what the women below were doing... It was a full house before the awards started!! Above: The woman in yellow is from Lytro - and the winners of the contest won one of these cool new "refocusing" cameras!! Below: Before each of the category winners were announced, they showed a slideshow of "top contenders", and I was absolutely thrilled to see some of my images appear on the big screen, yay!!!  ...I seriously couldn't believe it, there are no words to describe how happy and proud I was that my photos were noticed and recognized from among 2800 submissions!!  Definitely felt like I won the best prize of all! This is the winning photo, taken by Kris Meyers: After the awards were over I went downstairs to the aquarium to see the new Animal Attraction exhibit, and the first creature I stumbled upon was this coral banded shrimp (below). Above: Jellyfish! Above: I love these little cuttlefish, they sure do a great job of camouflaging themselves! Below: Finally I had to stop by to say hi to the Waxy Monkey Tree Frogs, some of my favorite pot-bellied froggies at Cal Academy! All of the other times I've been there, these guys have been huddled near the back, but this time I got lucky because they were all near the front (and facing forward)!! I stayed at this tank for a while because I wanted to see these frogs move - which was a huge fail because they are completely motionless... not even a blink, LOL. Overall I had an amazing time at night life!