First Picture Post: Fresh Water Fish

I am a NOOB to underwater photography, here are a few of my attempts at fish in a Missouri quarry (5-10 ft vis) with a Sealife DC1000 and two strobes. They are not that pretty or that good, but you have to start somewhere.

Taken over the last couple of weekends.

Firstly Welcome to the forums. I think you ahve made a great start I know that it is tough in murky conditions and photography is certainly not all about pretty things I think that the first shot is pretty nice. What imaging software did you use?

Tristan

I like the second one - clean shot of the fish and great sense of place. Nice to see a cichlid on the forums.

Those look Lightroom processed to me?

Alex

I like the second one - clean shot of the fish and great sense of place. Nice to see a cichlid on the forums.

 

Those look Lightroom processed to me?

 

Alex

iPhoto and Nikon's Capture NX.

Not an Adobe kind of a guy.

The first one is down about 25 feet and it was getting pretty dark, about 6 feet away from the wall...

The second one is actually quite near the surface, shot with the 'el cheapo' Sealife wet lens (which actually isn't that bad) but I had it on wrong so there was a bit of vignetting (which is why I cropped to a DSLR aspect ratio). The fish is a four incher or so, and the total distance to the hole in the background is about a yard more or less... I was about 4 feet down when I shot this, over a shelf of rock and muck, and keeping buoyant with my tank only about a foot below the surface and not screwing the vis was tricky.

The first one, I desaturated and burned the background a bit (there was little backscatter), the second one I removed some backscatter and lightened the back half of the fish a bit.

The third one, I burned the hole behind the fish to the upper right down to black since it was very ugly looking and distracting, cleaned off some backscatter and also I darkened the rock in front and desaturated it a bit.

Number 4 is cropped a bit and I sharpened the fish just a bit in the body and added some contrast.

Number 5 is a vertical crop of a horizontal shot. There was a lot of backscatter in the corners, so rather than spend an hour cleaning it up I just used gausian blur and nuked everything except the fish and the log.

In case you are wondering, I am an experienced land photographer... I have 20,000 or so of my shots online on my Zoopictures.net website, and then I have my Big Island project (which includes a few of my pathetic first attempts at ocean photography... please don't laugh when you see them)... My Blue Hawaii

For a "noob" you did outstanding...especially controlling the backscatter given your vis. I like the first one. Is that a smallmouth Bass?

For a "noob" you did outstanding...especially controlling the backscatter given your vis. I like the first one. Is that a smallmouth Bass?

Thanks... I am no expert, but I believe it is a perch.

Smallmouth bass are harder to take pictures of (I know, I have been trying and failing) since they are pretty shy and very fast.

I like the first quite a bit, the second also. In the first I like the lighting. Black background, and a nice focus on the fish!

A Great start for tough conditions.

I like the second.

Joaquin Gutierrez

Great shots!

I like the second too-you've managed to balance the lighting on the subject and background well

If this is your first attempt.....watch out the pros!

Adam

Nice shot.

Alex, ce4jesus,

It is a green sunfish Lepomis cyanellus.

Bryce

Nice shot.

 

Alex, ce4jesus,

It is a green sunfish Lepomis cyanellus.

 

Bryce

Thanks... good to know!