Filefish Photo forgettable

Planhead Filefish

Destin, FL

TG-4, UWL-04, YS-03, YS-D2

light amount of post-processing (color correction and cropping)

During the dive I felt I nailed the shot when I took it; the filefish gave a decent angle as I was slowly moving into position. When I first reviewed I was pretty excited, it was sharp, clear and had good color. But quickly, other shots from the day usurped it as more memorable or interesting.

It could be too closely cropped with too dark a background, not a dramatic enough upward angle, or perhaps just the scenery and subject are themselves forgettable. It just doesn't seem to go beyond a good "fish id" shot. All comments and feedback welcome.

Thanks

Using a single strobe on the right side might have helped. Or at least turning down the output of the left strobe by quite a bit. This would have darkened the left side of the pic as well as possibly enabling a shadow to be cast onto the background reef helping to isolate the fish from it.

Thanks for the suggestion; I will look for an opportunity to try that technique next dive. Is varying output of the two strobes a good way generally for creating more depth in photos?

It depends on the circumstances. You need to quickly analyze the situation and adjust the lighting accordingly. One way to quickly (maybe faster than turning a tiny knob on the flash) reduce a strobe's output is to turn it. Tilting the left strobe up could have done this. Chimping can help with the learning curve.

That's what I was thinking, pulling a strobe back and pointing it out would be much quicker; thanks for the tip.

I will often turn my strobes to adjust lighting. It works great and much faster. One thing I would do is flip it horizontally. our eyes want to travel from the top left of an image to the lower right just like we would if we were reading a book. So if my eyes go from left to right the first thing I run into is a fish but and since I'm not a dog, I would rather say hello to it's face. I've done a lot of before and after photos for health retreats and I used the same portrait for the instructor and just flipped it. The light was coming from the left so when he looked left his face was more lit up. I flipped it so he was looking to the right and light seemed to be coming from the right as well. Everyone thought the photo of him facing the left was brighter because their eyes started at the left of the image and the first thing they ran into was his lit up face. For the one of him facing to the right, the first thing the eyes ran into was the darker back of his head then jumped around to his lit up face. So everyone thought the one of him facing left was brighter even though they were exactly the same.

To me the image is just a little flat, examining the histogram it is blocked on the shadows, easily tweaked, particularly if shot in raw. You could increase exposure in Raw then re-do levels or maybe move the shadow detail slider a touch. In PS I use luminosity masks which allow you to tweak curves om highlights midtones and shadows separately which is quite useful, in this case an S curve on the midtones with the crossover of the S down low in the shadows is what I would do. If you are interested I could post a tweaked version for you.