Sometimes it’s fun to experiment.  Watching the excellent Lighting In Layers book by David Hobby, I saw him doing an extremely simple lighting setup with a frog.  I figured, “a fish is kinda like a frog” and since I had some gear that was a bit like what he used, why not give it a try to see if I can make it do the same thing?

Turns out close isn’t always the same unfortunately, but it was a good learning experience.  For example I learned the following:

• Shooting with a macro lens that focuses fairly close right against a terrarium isn’t the same as a lens that has a macro mode at 300mm (read: I was shooting from across the room)
• Shooting a stationary frog is a lot different than a moving, agitated fish.
• Shooting with a foam core background isn’t the same as using a random faux-leather binder
• Shooting through water is a heck of a lot different than through air.

After a bunch of work in photoshop (again, this was an experiment) I got the image you see above.  The background has been drastically darkened, the foreground has been sharpened and “helped” a bunch, but it’s still a fun enough shot, beyond a snap anyway.  Most importantly though, I got out and did something different, put my own spin on someone elses idea, and learned what to do differently next time.  And really, that’s all that matters isn’t it?