melev

I was playing in Lightroom for a few minutes yesterday, and figured I'd really manipulate the heck out of this one picture. It's pretty amazing how something can be cleaned up, especially if you are good at this (doing it for a living). Me, I just wanted to demonstrate the difference between what came off the SD card vs. what the final result could be. I'll show you the better image first.

You can see this Frogspawn coral without annoying distractions. I used a tool to black out all around the coral (Adjustment brush dropped the exposure all the way to -4) to make it stand out against a nice clean backdrop. A little black was added to the subject to enhance shadowing, a touch more green to provide some pop to the proper areas, and recover those whites just a bit to the point they don't look washed out.

This is the original shot, as it came out of my D90. Photography Tip: It would help significantly if the water quality was clear in the first place, of course. Don't feed prior to taking pictures, and use a filter sock the night before to polish out the particulates prior to shooting. Clean the glass the night before, and make sure the room you are shooting in is dark with zero reflections to spoil your images. Wear a dark shirt without logo, so you don't appear in your images.

One of the biggest compliments I've ever received was "Your tank looks just like your pictures." I was thinking "well, that's the point after all." But this image here is simply an example of taking it further, and how easily it can be accomplished. Typically, this is not the kind of a picture you'll see me share; It's artistic, not realistic.

To think you'll get a picture perfectly out of your camera is just about impossible. I probably get three, maybe four pictures a year where I'm ready to jump out of my skin yelling "Nailed it!" - those are the very few that are absolutely perfect and can be shared without a single change. The rest of the time, I run my images through "post processing" to make them look presentable.

Since I'm sharing, here are a few pictures I took over at Drew's house on Sunday. His reef is really coming along nicely.

In an impossible spot to shoot, this LPS had formed a bubble. This occurs when the polyp is about to split into to heads. It is very natural; nothing to be concerned about.

This vividly green Frogspawn overpowered the camera's sensors (or I could have adjusted the camera properly) in this shot, making it look darkened. I like it, as it makes look more rich in color.

Same goby. I saw its symbiotic shrimp briefly, but he never came out for a photo op.

A very nice "Strawberry Shortcake" colony was added recently - just beautiful. Too bad a bit of it didn't somehow drop into my camera bag before I left.

These acans look soft like a puppy.

This bright yellow leather was maybe 2" front to back. Just a fraglet with abundant polyps extended.

Finally, a funny for y'all...