Pretty Fish

[harmon1]

[ktuli]

Harmon,

(Hopefully that is your name... I don't know how else to address you though. You might want to throw your first name in the Realname field in your profile so we can do so properly. )

Anyway, on to the photo.

You have a very challenging subject there. The reflections on the water make it very difficult to get the clean, crisp shot you were after. However, if you ever want to retry this kind of shot, I'd highly recommend trying out a circular polarizer. It will be able to eliminate the reflection, giving you the nice vibrant colors of the fish. However, it will also cause a longer exposure time, so you'll need a pretty bright day to try that.

Additionally, I would give this shot a 90 degree clockwise rotation and maybe a slight crop to remove part of the bright area that would then be on the bottom of the frame. That would help to keep it from being the area of the shot that your eyes get drawn to.

Also, you might want to play with trying a B&W or Sepia conversion on this. I know it would negate the bright colors of the fish, but it would also help to alleviate the issues you're seeing with the reflections.

Just my $0.02.

- Bill

[Geoff F]

Polarizers are something which I rarely use now, with digital. But it might just work here, as Bill mentioned.

Otherwise, changing the lighting angle or even simply adjusting the White Balance towards the red might be sufficient to remove that bit of blueness in the water.

And I agree that swimming fish are a very difficult subject to get perfect.