Esther Grant's Zebra

[Rich Steel]

Hi

I was digging through my old had drive and came across this friendly face taken back in the mists of time in 2005. I started my photography with fish and spent many a happy hour on dark winter evenings with my tank of African Cichlids and thought I would post one for a change. This fish was an imported wild caught fish from malawi, a real character but now sadly departed. The black background was a result of the flash set-up and tank background, a few floating particles have been cloned out but that is all. I was looking at the fish tonight and thinking prehaps time to dust the flashes off and have another go.

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k217/squidfish_2006/mouth.jpg

Taken with a 20D! with 100mm F2.8 Macro at ISO100 F14 and 1/250s. Remote fired diffused flash placed on top of the tank.

Cheers

Rich

[Ignacio Yufera]

Very effective image Rich, love the detail in the mouth and the fin. Nice touch showing the "false eggs" in its anal fin, and the ghost-like feel overall with a surreal touch.

[Alfred Forns]

I'm impressed !!! Love the image High impact and amazing detail !! Photographing in tank is not easy !!

[Rich Steel]

Thanks for the comments. For anyone interested in photographing aquarium fish I wrote a short article a while back on the technique, although the kit was a bit cobbled together, which can be found here.

http://www.aquatic-photography.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4732

Bascially the best approach is a two flash technique with the main flash from above and a bit of fill flash from the front.

Cheers

Rich

[Ilija Dukovski]

Great image, you gave me an idea to try it myself. The link leads to a login page,
is there a way to get the article w/o registration?

[Rich Steel]

Apologies you use to be able to access the article without logon :(. There is a version of the article in dutch here http://www.hobbykwekers.nl/een-fotografie-sessie-van-het-begin-tot-het-eind (http://www.hobbykwekers.nl/een-fotografie-sessie-van-het-begin-tot-het-eind) which if you run through google translate does not read too badly.

If you have any questions just let me know :)

Cheers

Rich

[Ilija Dukovski]

Thank you a lot :)