Bargibanti seahorse
Pygmee seahorse
Pygmee seahorse
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Nov, 2012Views
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Winner in Hidden in Plain Sight - Camouflaged Animals Photo Challenge
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Stephendragon
June 07, 2014
This is just fantastic, great macro shot. What housing and strobes are you using?
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken on a diving trip to Ambon (Indonesia)Time
This shot was taken in the morning. But the time of day is, in this case, irrelevant. This is a pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus Bargibanti). This seahorse is approximately 1,5 cm long. In fact they are so small and well comouflaged that they are almost impossible to find. With this kind of subject, the background is usually dark, due to the flash. So any time of day it will be possible to create such an image.Lighting
As these sea horses generally live quite deep (below 25 meters), I used a flash to illuminate the seahorse.Equipment
I own a Nikon D300, with a 60 mm Macro lens. I used the Inon Z240 flash, which is an underwater-strobe. No other equipment was used.Inspiration
Actually whenever a small seahorse is found and I have the macro-lens on, I try to make a shot. Normally these seahorses are very shy, they turn their back to you. So when the animal does not want to cooperate, bad luck. This one looked into the lens, so I was very lucky to be able to have it in focus and looking at me at the same time. Focussing on such a small moving animal is very difficult, as diver you are hovering on the reef and it is very difficult to remain in 1 location. It helps to have a fast shutterspeed.Editing
On this one I did some post processing: some extra saturation in the coral and the seahorse, so that the color is as I remembered it from real life. Also, I removed some backscatter. You have to place the flash close to the lens when capturing scenes in a sea fan. If the flash is too far away, it will be behind branches of the fan, which will nor work. So in this case, due to the position of the flash, I illuminated particles in the water. These were removed during post processing.In my camera bag
A Nikon D300 with a 60 mm Macro lens; a 10-24 Wide Angle. A Hugyfot underwater housing with 1 flat port (for macro), 1 dome port for wide angel. 2 Inon Z240 underwater flashes.Feedback
First learn to dive and learn about underwater photography. Some knowledge about animals living in the sea and their behaviour also helps. If you know in which type of coral a seahorse lives, it is a lot easier to find them. Stay close to your dive-guide. They are usually trained to find small and special creatures. Apart from that they know the area, and they have very good eyes.
