Fire Bellied Toad

[Roman Kurywczak]

Decided to play around a bit last weekend with the Sigma 70mm macro. I have always wanted to do under water photography but my wife has drawn the line in the sand as to spending the $$$ for the housing. What to do? Well......I know macro mod Steve Maxson builds his own aquatic tanks.....so off I went to the local pet superstore to see what I could buy off the shelf. First, I found a small 2 and a half gallon tank for $14. Check. Then they happened to have a few fire bellied toads for sale......for only $2.50! Got two! A bit of gravel and frog food.....for a total of around $30 made the setup. The next morning I woke up.....went to the local pond.....took some duckweed home in a contained.....added it to the tank. Threw a rock in from my yard and voila! Hours of patience and one of my fake sky BG's.....this is the result.
Might be a bit over the top but it was a great learning experience as well as lots of fun. I will experiment with other BG's in the future.
Canon 1D Mark 3 with the Sigma 70mm macro lens at f/14 for 1/250 sec. and ISO 800 natural light, gold reflector, HH. Clean up to glass and water done in CS5. Almost FF.

[Steve Kaluski]

Nice to see some 'grey' matter being used, excellent thinking Roman, with good results .

I also like the thinking to get some blue above too and the % split water to sky, gives it a natural, look & feel. Nice vibrant, punchy, image. Quite like the central POV, but wonder if you could crop some off the RHS? Just an old mans thought.

Hope to see more and how things develop too.

TFS
Steve

[Andrew Merwin]

Roman, this was a very creative project. Way to go. I think your results are great! I especially how I can just make out the rear legs & feet of the frog. TFS.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Roman you're the man, great idea - I like it very much indeed can't wait to see more!!

[Maureen Allen]

Absolutely wonderful, Roman. Thanks for sharing your technique!

[Randy Stout]

Roman:

I can see how this could quickly lead to having hundreds of new pets around the house!

Fun picture, and def. shoot it with some different BGs. This one screams out a mountain lake to me.

The transition from water to sky on the left side is a bit odd looking.

Cheers

Randy

[Nick Palmieri]

Nice one Roman. The more I look the more I like it. The frog position and the sky look pretty cool. May have to go back and look at mine...

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Roman. Looks like all your thinking and experimenting really paid off! Love the head-on water level view. The sky background is a nice touch too - I agree with Randy about the water/sky interface on the left - easy to fix. Very well done and I'm looking forward to seeing more!