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  • Thank you to everyone who registered and showed up for the BIG Fish Deal #7.

March PotM Winner

Pat Kelly

CCA Member
Staff member
There were some questions/posts as to the fish having been put into a black background. Let me assure you that I did not cut out a fish and paste it into a black background.

First I have looked everywhere to find the original photo. I must not have saved it. That picture is from several
years ago. Its the same fish that is on the top left of the ECC forum home page.

I do enjoy using my flash and settings on the camera to black out the backgrounds to show off the fish but in this case the fish was, at that time,
in my 150 which also has a black background. Most of my tanks are either painted black or blue. As I have to replace the tanks, I have been going darker.
Yes I was using a nicer camera. It was a Nikon D70. (gone now,) A 60mm macro lens and I had at
least one flash on the top of the tank.

Typically what I would do with the Photoshop (when I had it) was follow the Bobby Phillips way of thinking. If you had to work on the picture for more than 3 minutes then just delete it.

Normally the first thing I would do would be to Crop the photo to eliminate any other partial fish in the tank or
the lift tubes.
Next I would size the picture down to 800 wide.
My problem with my older photos is that I never kept the original. Therefore if I wanted to blow them up, I could not because I only kept the 800 wide shot.

Next I would Auto correct the color and contrast. Adjust the brightness.
I would then zoom in and eliminate the bubbles or fish poo that was floating.
Finally I would add my signature to the photo if I really liked it.
Funny thing is that on the photo in question, it looks like I did not like it so I did not add my signature. LOL
I believe my thinking at the time was that I did not like the way the tail was so dark.
The other thing about this photo, you can tell that I had the flash on top because of the "eye drop"
Its the shadow of the flash going through the eye lens causing that "tear" look under the eye. If I had liked the photo more, I would have gone in and tried to fix this at the time.

So to answer the question, Yes I used photoshop. But only to clean up the picture.



So this is the same fish a few years earlier. This time he is in a tank with a blue background.







This guy is in a 29 with the background painted black.
To be a better picture, I should have used the AquaMojo way of doing it and had another flash under the fish. But since the tank has gravel and is about 3 inches
off the floor, this is hard to do.



I hardly get my camera out anymore. I upgraded to a D90 last year thinking that I would use it more..... I take it
places and it stays in the bag.
I need to use it more. I have not gotten it "dialed in" as well as I had the D70.

I only added a photo into the contest because we needed more pictures.
So please send in a photo this month.



__________________
 

chriscoli

Administrator
Pat, I love your photos....they give me something to work towards! I definitely need to get that remote flash.

Which one do you have?
 

Andrew

Members
Pat, please put a picture in every potm contest... Gives the rest of us something to aspire to.
 

Tony

Alligator Snapping Turtle/Past Pres
Great shot, Pat. Congrats!

Also, thanks for the explanation. :)

Keep it up, sir.
 
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