Last night I headed over to my first ever IGers Birmingham meet at the National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. I've never been a photographer meet up thing before; mainly because I associate them with old blokes talking about gear and taking crap macro photos of flowers but IGers Birmingham seemed like a cool bunch, plus they were doing it after hours at the Sea Life Centre so that seemed worth the visit.

Here are some photos from the hour and a half I had in there.

People > Penguins

0.33am

As much as I went to this meet up with the intention to get back to my roots and take shots of something that isn't portraiture for once I couldn't resist. The dude above had the same eye colour as the water so it had to be shot.

I placed a LumeCube off to his right to counterbalance the strong light in the tank with the darkness of the viewing room and grabbed this shot.

0.33am as this guy is known on Instagram is only 14 years old and already is killing it. Go give him a look.

Ocuk & Mini.Sophie_

I also ran into this couple in the tunnel (Ocuk & Mini.Sophie_ on Instagram) and asked them to pose for me. The piggyback was their idea.

Girl in the tunnel

I don't know the name of this person but I couldn't resist grabbing a shot of her sat underneath this tank full of little Nemo fishes (Nemo fishes is I'm sure the correct terminology)

Other IGers

A couple more shots of assorted people who were buzzing around.

The Tunnel

When I first got into the place I knew the underwater tunnel was going to be a hot spot and I also knew I wanted to try and get some long exposures there so I hurried straight to it and grabbed some shots before it got busy.

Pengweenos

.....and because I couldn't go to the Sealife Centre and photograph zero actual sealife here's some shots of some penguins.

Thanks..

Thanks to IGers Birmingham for having me along.

Thanks to the Sealife Centre for having us.

Thanks to Kris Askey for hookin' me up.

Thanks to the IGers who let me photograph them.

National Sealife Centre - IGers Birmingham