Today In The Fishroom ~ 09/5/10

Nice shot of the male Zonatum. Lots of color and flash shortly after a water change.



Here's the FO. Benai male. I rarely see the females in the tank as they hide from the male. I believe they are breeding once again. I did a 90% water change twice this week....if that doesn't do it, time for Barry White.

New Photos

Do you only keep this for fish photos? Wasn't sure where to post. Feel free to move it if it should be somewhere else.

I had the opportunity to day to photograph a large collection of some poisonous reptiles....snakes and lizards. I also got some non-poisonous...and pretty unique images. The guy breeds snakes. I ham going back to photograph some of the rare snakes that he has....some pretty wild stuff. I shot a bunch of stuff today. Here's a sampling.

Bearded Dragons...gotta tell you, if I ever go all "snake and lizard" this is one I would get. Awesome animals.



The Gaboon Viper...longest fangs and more total venom than any other poisonous snake.



LOVE this photo of the Diamond Back Rattler. He was striking the glass just prior and after I set the camera I missed one. It's all timing...guessing just before the fangs...



...or tongue comes out. This is a very large Tegu Lizard...3' I have several other nice head shots and one more of the tongue which I will post later.



Check out this Monacled Cobra! They finally moved it out into the light for me and he hooded once...but not in the right place in the light. Gotta love the head shot.



Last one for now...Gila Monster. I waited the LONGEST for this photo. He just wasn't moving.

New Photos

Some interesting photos of my large tank with various "Silver Dollars", taken with a 16mm lens and Nikon D300. Stylized in Photoshop.

"Swimming with the Fishes"



Silver Dali I



Silver Dali II



Silver Dali III

Today In The Fishroom ~ 08/16/10

I took some photos of a few fish that normally remain hidden among the others in a 300 gallon tank. Here's F0 A. Robertsoni from Rio Jutiapa in Honduras. The fish is also known as Red Cheek Robertsoni:



A shot of A. Nourisati...the Dilver Dollar makes the size of the fish deceiving. The SD is closer to the camera and about five inches in diameter (height). the Nourisati is about 8"




Some close ups of the beautiful fins of P. Fredrichsthali "La Cieba". Here's one with the background in tact.



This one I knocked out the BG in photoshop to make the fins "pop"



And finally...here's a High Dynamic Range photo of a single fish tank in the fish room. It currently houses some small grow outs. You can see them if you zoom in...but not that obvious overall. I tried it with this tank only becasue you can't see the small fish from this distance in all of the exposures. Bigger fish have more motion and would look odd. I'm going to try and set up a shot of a bigger fish early one morning when they are still sleeping and more or less immobile.

This is actually ten exposures starting at 30 seconds (lens open) and ending at 1/30th of a second. Each exposure illuminates a little more or a little less of the detail giving detail in both shadow and highlights. The only light I used was the single strip light over the tank and the spill over light from a tank behind this one. The shots are then combined using special software. Pretty cool stuff.

Today In The Fishroom ~ 08/2/10

I took a few photos of the Labridens tank. Here's the male...around 10". One of the things that I picked up during the ACA convention talk by Juan Miquel is that often the yellow labridens will begin loosing their beautiful yellow color when in the aquarium. This due to their normal diet of snails on the wild. When breeding, of course, they still like a banana with fins.