outside my back porch. A perfect addition to the backyard project. But
I never shot something like this before so I figured before getting
these wild creatures in a tank and not doing things right and maybe
even killing the guys, I figured I would practice. Not that these fish
are dispensable, but they certainly are used to a tank.
My first goal was to have a tank. Second was to have clean water. I
hooked up a filter that is meant for something twice the size as this
tank. I let it run a few days so the water was crystal clear. Finally
I 'obtained' three variety of fish to photograph. Using my Elinchrom
kit and a white vinyl backdrop I placed the tank (sans filter) on the
kitchen counter. Making sure the glass was spotless, I was able to see
the fish floating in what seemed like air. It was pretty cool to see.
I then just went to it. Positioning the light either overhead or to
the side. Using a second light for the white seamless or just putting
a black foam core behind to get the black backdrop instead.
On of the challenges ended up being that the fish sank to the bottom.
Because they were already stressed they sat on the bottom trying to
figure things out. The gold fish seemed less affected, only raising
his top fins every time the flash went off.
One cool side affect of the other chiclids (Jack Dempsey and an Albino
Oscar) sitting on the bottom was that it made it easy to focus. I had
to make sure I was parallel to the glass most of the time in order to
avoid distortion. Also, some of them sat really close to the glass
which made it easy to use my 60mm micro to get super close. I removed
a few spots here and there from the water, but other than that these
shots are as taken.
Now, when I get the Peacock bass in the wild (unclean) water I will
have a challenge of him flopping all over the place and also the water
getting really dirty really fast. We will just have to see what happens.
Regardless, I think I started myself on a new project of shooting fish
tank pets. It should be fun and will give me a ton of ideas to work
with. Now I have to figure out how many friends can donate their fish
or how many times the local fish store will allow me to use their
liberal return policy.
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