Photo:
An Elinchrom 250R flash head bounced off of a white card behind the fish tank. I used everyday aluminum foil as a side fill, since anything in front of the fish tank glass would reflect back at the camera. And one very brave fish who is now living a life of leisure with her friends in my kitchen overlooking the garden.
This is the original uncropped capture after RAW processing
Photoshop:
Process in RAW with white balance, exposure, clarify, sharpen, vibrance
Overall Curves Adjustment layer with no changes other than using Multiply Blending Mode to build saturation and contrast
Calculations using the Add Blending Mode to create an accurate mask for cleaning up bubbles and the junk in the water (my basement is rather dusty and the water kept getting filled with it)
Replaced the plain white card background with a clean even background
Some spotting to clean up what the overall masking missed
Statistics
Place: 20 out of 207 Avg (all users): 6.5057 Avg (commenters): 7.8947 Avg (participants): 6.3000 Avg (non-participants): 6.6415 Views since voting: 2076 Views during voting: 439 Votes: 176 Comments: 23 Favorites: 6 (view)
WOW! This is another one that if it were me picking, it would have won a ribbon. This is so amazing! Flawlessly executed! 6.5 is certainly a nice score -- but I like the score your commenters gave you much better. . .it's much closer to what it deserves!
Only slight nitpicks are that ideally the fish would have faced towards the viewer (since it is the main splash of colour and focal point, and also a shot like this deserves a title, to either explain what is happenin (literally) or to draw the viewer in to your chain of thought and get their emotional buy-in whether it is wonder, excitement, humour or anything else.
Such a fantastic swirl in the water. The little fish is a bit too dark to really make this pic pop as much as some of the past versions of leaping goldfish but I love the swirl!
poor fishy, how many times did you take him out of the water just to throw him back in again?
good attempt, not enough light on the fish and the background, too many refractions in the water, crop at top is a little close
Looks like you twirled the water with your finger then snapped the goldfish as he was near the vortex you created. Then flipped the pic upside down? Yeah? Great effect.
Nice job capturing this instant! Next time try putting a flash at the belly of the fish to light it up more. Did you shoot this reversed and then turn it upside-down?
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