Photographing Your Aquarium - Getting The Effects Right!

Having an aquarium is a wonderful past time, and if you are passionate about photography as well as aquarium fish, you may want to make some nice images of your fish. As with any kind of photography, the two most important elements remain lighting and composition.

Lighting the Aquarium
Try and light the aquarium from the top. You could add reflectors on the outside and under the aquarium to get a variety of results. For example if you would like to accentuate the aqua feel, add a blue reflector right opposite the light source, in this case that would be under the aquarium. You could also use a blue gel on the light source to create blue light. Before you begin shooting, give the fish adequate time to get used to the gear suddenly appearing around the sides of their aquarium world, Fish are more aware of their surroundings than you may imagine. If you do not want to see your fish jumping out of the aquarium in terror, work slowly and calmly, and do not make sudden movements. Give them time to get used to any new feature you want to add. For example, if you've just placed the flash light looking down on the aquarium; give it a few minutes before you add a reflector.

Composition
Getting your aquarium fish into focus as they dart around the container is not very easy, especially if you wish to shoot close ups. For close up shots you may need to use extension rings and tubes between the camera and the lens. Take a few minutes to get used to the sideways motion of the fish before you begin shooting. If the fish are moving sideways, you can minimize the depth of field since they are more or less equally far from the lens when moving from this end to that. You could even fix the camera on a tripod for a smooth left-right-left motion. As you pan the tripod, fire the shutter while still in the slow movement. This can create some exciting effects, and minimize the blur on the fish. If the fish are moving towards you on the other hand, you would want to quickly change to maximum possible depth of field, since the distance between you and them is on the decrease.

Exposure
You will not have time to calculate exposure every time you change the depth of filed. It is a good idea to set the camera on aperture priority mode if you have the feature, and let the camera worry about the changes in shutter speed as you change the aperture.

Safety
When working with lighting equipment, make absolutely sure that the flash head is secure on the stand. If it comes off the stand and falls into the aquarium, the electricity would immediately kill the fish.