Jellyfish make great photography subjects. I shot these while my wife Michele and I were visiting the Monterrey Bay Aquarium in California. Their slow, steady and almost predictable movement lend themselves to great compositions. A place like the Monterrey Bay Aquarium has a number of different jellyfish exhibits and some of them use variable colored lighting. The primary difficulties with shooting in these conditions are dim lighting and the people traffic. However, if you can shoot at a high enough ISO and kindly convince people give you a few seconds to shoot you can capture some amazing images.

Photos like these make incredible statements when they're displayed at very large scale. They almost transport you into the ocean environment.When standing in front of one of these you can almost hear the sound of being under water and smell the ocean. The captivating depth of color and the strange yet comforting forms of the jellyfish can be mesmerizing.

What is it?

That's the most common reaction from people. A lot of people have told me they thought it was a computer generated image or some kind of painting rather then a photograph.

What you're seeing is a photograph of life size sculpture of a tree. I came across this sculpture at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. It's really impressive in-person. Even more so on this day when a storm was quickly approaching. That storm rained and hailed on us just minutes after this photo was taken. It did create an incredible backdrop complimenting the natural shape and highlighting the shiny surface.

The artist is Roxy Paine and the sculpture is called "Graft" from his "Dendroid" collection.

Here is a description with a link from the museums website:

Overview: At 45 feet high by 45 feet wide, Graft (2008–2009) by American sculptor Roxy Paine stands out among the trees in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art, one-half mile from the United States Capitol on the National Mall. The Gallery commissioned Paine to make a "Dendroid," as the artist calls his series of treelike sculptures, for the Sculpture Garden. The newly installed work is the first by Paine to enter the Gallery's collection, as well as the first contemporary sculpture to be installed in the Sculpture Garden in the 10 years since it opened.

Made from more than 8,000 components, the stainless steel structure—which weighs approximately 16,000 pounds—was installed the week of October 26–30 by Paine and his crew. The 43-year-old artist has shown his other Dendroids on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), in the Olympic Sculpture Park (Seattle), and outside the Museum of Modern Art (Fort Worth, Texas), among other locations.

http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/permanent/paine.html

And, here is a link to Roxy's website and his "Dendroid" collection:

http://roxypaine.com/dendroids/

Here is one of my favorite shots from my time volunteering at Circuit of The Americas. This very tough to capture image of the Pirelli GT3 Cup Trophy #12 Porsche driven by Dan Weyland with St. Mary's University decals on the doors came out especially well. The photo was taken as the cars are flying through the high speed S's of turns 2,3,4 and 5 at well over 100 m.p.h. From the vantage point of the inner track road it's like watching a fluid back and forth dance at the limits of what's possible. In the car it's a g-force filled side to side roller coaster that seems to go on for ever. Did I mention that Dan was 73 years old at the time of this photo?