Friday

Carmel Plaza hosts its ever-popular Jazz at the Plaza. This week, Kenny Stahl plays jazz flute while Chock Rock Vineyards serves wine. 5pm-7pm, $15.

The Six Organs of Admittance play a psychedelic acoustic/electric blend at Fernwood in Big Sur tonight. Seattle’s Master Musicians of Bukake, best described as “Vintage Black Sabbath if performed by gypsies,” open. 9pm, $15.

Local reggae artists F.U.B.A.R. bring their hard-edged blend of hip-hop and reggae to the Hippodrome in Monterey tonight.

Saturday

Put in some elbow grease for a good cause. Ag Against Hunger is inviting volunteers to help them glean a field. You’ll be going through a field that was already harvested, picking the crops that have been left behind so that they can go to food pantries. 9am to noon, call 831-755-1480 for location.

Celebrate America’s omnipresent grain, corn, at Earthbound Farm. The party includes corn on the cob eating contests, a corn maze, corn husk dolls, and more. 11am-3pm, free.

You can also help a cause by eating some tasty barbecue. Chateau Julien in Carmel Valley is selling tri-tip, chicken and baked beans as a fundraiser for Best Buddies. Eat it on site, or take it home for dinner. 12pm-4pm, $12-$15.

Have you heard? The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a new great white shark in its Outer Bay exhibit! Check it out tonight while enjoying live music, great food and wine during Evenings by the Bay. 6-8pm.

Monterey State Historic Parks and the Robert Louis Stevenson Club join forces to celebrate the author’s work with “Recollections of Monterey” at the Robert Louis Stevenson House at 530 Houston St. Actor Keith Decker will read Stevenson’s work while guitarist Robert McNamara plays music. Reserve in advance; this will sell out fast. 7-9pm, $10 general admission includes refreshments.

Sunday

Happy anniversary, Hostelling International! In celebration of the organization’s 75th anniversary, the Monterey Hostel will hold an open house. There will be live music from Nancy Raven, Barbara and Steve Brooks, and the Usual Suspects, as well as tours, a raffle and more. 2-5pm, free.

Take another chance to admire that new white shark at the Monterey Bay Aquarium during Evenings by the Bay. 6-8pm.

As if you needed another excuse to go to Nepenthe, tonight they’re hosting performances from a number of fantastic bellydancers. 7-9pm.

The staff at the Monterey Bay Aquarium were kind enough to let us in to take a few photos of the new resident of the Outer Bay exhibit, a juvenile female great white shark.

Digital cameras, as you may already know, are notoriously poor at taking photos in low light. Unless you’ve already purchased one of the new digital cameras detailed in David Pogue’s New York Times article “Low Light Becomes a Highlight” (the Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR or the Sony DSC-WX1), you may have trouble getting a clear shot, for several reasons.

The shark moves very quickly, so allowing the shutter to stay open a long time leads to blurring. (In addition, the auto-focus on your camera may be more focused on the bubble curtain that’s been set up to prevent the shark from crashing into the glass wall.)

Because it tends to stick to the top of the tank, you’ll also get some unusual angles, like this one:

Your best viewing point is from the second story viewing platform. However, bring a monopod, or you are more likely to get a great white blur than a great white shark, as shown here.

You can also try setting it to a high shutter speed, but then you might get a photo like this:

This is, of course, something you can fiddle with in Photoshop to bring out the image. You might get a photo like this:

Could be a great white shark, could be Nessie. Your friends would just have to trust you on this one.

This is clearer, and obviously a shark.

With many cameras, however, your best bet may be a silhouette of the great white shark against the daylight streaming through the top of the tank, such as this one.

If you still have a film camera, bring it along as well as some high-speed film (Fujicolor 1600 may do the trick, and Kodak T-MAZ certainly will). Then share your awesome photos with us!

Here’s some great video, brought to you by the Monterey Bay Aquarium:

Have some other tips on how to get a great photo of this great white shark? Leave us your advice in the comments! And if you still need to plan your visit to see the great white shark, check out our fantastic deals for hotels, attractions and more!

The Monterey Bay Aquarium announced last night that they have a new great white shark on display. As of this morning, she seems to be adapting well to the Outer Bay exhibit. This is the fifth time the Monterey Bay Aquarium has had a great white shark on display.

This juvenile great white shark will not only be of interest to visitors – it will also add to the Aquarium’s understanding of the life cycle of juvenile sharks. As the Los Angeles Times reports, the Aquarium tags every great white shark that they keep in captivity, and once released to the wild, the information garnered from their tracking tags provides a wealth of information about the sharks’ range and habits.

According to the Aquarium, this new juvenile shark just under 80 pounds right now, but will probably gain 100 pounds over the next six months.

The shark was accidentally caught around June 23 by a commercial fisherman near Malibu and was kept in an offshore pen for observation for several weeks. Once marine biologists decided the shark would adapt well to the Aquarium, it was brought to Monterey Bay in the “Finnebago,” “a 3,000-gallon oblong holding tank filled with water kept at 68 degrees,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Not able to get to the Monterey Bay Aquarium this weekend? Look at the Outer Bay webcam and see if you can catch a glimpse of it!

To whet your appetite, here’s footage of another juvenile great white shark they had on display at the Monterey Bay Aquarium two years ago:

Have you seen the shark yet? What did you think?

Need to plan your visit to see the shark? Check out the great escape deals at hotels throughout Monterey County!