House of Fins had their 53rd Anniversary and SPLASH event over the weekend of Oct 2-3, 2010 and I was lucky enough to be contracted to shoot photography to cover the entire event. House of Fins is a retail store with a long history of excellent livestock and customer service. They concentrate their business on three areas, customizing aquarium installation, maintenance, and the retail store in Greenwich, CT. The maintenance side covers Manhattan, NY and Greenwich, CT as well as the surrounding areas.
I arrived to the event a few days early to spend some time with friend in NY and got a chance to do a behind the scenes tour at Atlantis Marine World, home of the 20,000 jaw dropping reef tank and of course Joe Yaiullo. If you get a chance to be in that neck of the woods, both House of Fins and Atlantis are a must see.
Friday I made my way from Long Island to Greenwich to chill out in the hotel with some of the familiar faces showing up for this event. The line up of speakers was incredible for Saturday and Sunday and the house was packed. The speaker room was full with the overflow crowd standing in the back. And the store had a constant flow of traffic in and out showing up that made for record sales. Scott Michael, Jake Adams, Bob Fenner, Christine Williams, Scott Fellman, Randy Reed, and Karen Randall made for an all-star speaker line-up. I was able to stick around for Scott Michael's talk long enough to learn that there is yet another underwater photographer I'm out shown by. Jake Adam's talk about LED lighting for the aquarium was also very interesting for me personally considering I'm using LED's over my new Solana 60. Lunch was provided every day in the form of massive sub sandwiches along with countless goodies, snacks, and treats.
The store located at 209 Bruce Park Avenue is two part, a retail store and across the street, a showroom and office space. House of Fins is able acquire some of the most rare species of fish and livestock in the world. They have ample, knowledgeable staff to help the customers and everyone I met there was just generally a good person to talk to. Very nice and accommodating. Below are some of my favorite fish for sale in the store, but if you'd like a complete look at all the fish pics I took, please refer to this blog post.
Outside the buildings there were plenty of top-notch vendors on site for customers to talk to. Boyd Enterprises, Deltec, Eheim, Giesemann, My Reef Creations, PE Mysis, Reef Nutrition, Rowaphos, Seachem, Sunlight Supply, Tunze, and Warner Marine were all there to show their support.
All-in-all I had a great weekend and got to see some choice livestock, and listen to some of the smartest people in the hobby. I have to take my hat off to Rob Bray, the owner of House of Fins. He runs a great operation and is a generous host. Here are some more pics for you to enjoy. If you'd like to see the whole album please feel free to check it out on Creative Soup's facebook page.
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