Los Peces del Navidad
Dec, 2015Views
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Awards
Contest Finalist in Pets and Holidays Photo Contest
Contest Finalist in Holiday Lights Photo Contest 2017
Winner in Fish Photo Challenge
Peer Award
Outstanding Creativity
Absolute Masterpiece
Magnificent Capture
Top Choice
All Star
Superb Composition
Top Ranks
Top 20 rank
Top 10 rank
Top 10 rankTop 10 rank week 1
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in my very own living room, of my own gold fish and Christmas tree. It's amazing the things we can find in our own typical surroundings to turn into a fun piece of art!Time
This was shot in my living room sometime in the afternoon. I used what available light there was coming from the window, but ultimately had to crank my ISO because I needed a relatively fast shutter speed to freeze the fish.Lighting
The lighting was all natural, and most of it came from my living room window, the light on the fish tank, and of course the lights from the tree, which is what created the bokeh effect in the background. Christmas is probably the best time to take random bokeh pictures because you've got a great subject in your tree!Equipment
This was taken with my Nikon D810 camera and my 35mm lens for the fish, and the 85mm for the tree lights. I didn't use a tripod, it was all hand held, I didn't really have much to set up because it was a spur of the moment decision, but I think it turned out pretty well :)Inspiration
I got the idea for the picture when I was looking at my fish, and it happened to be at an angle that I saw the lights of the tree through the tank. I thought, hmm, that would make a really cool picture! So I got out my camera, took some pictures of my fish swimming with the tree bokeh in the background, and then set up on my snow globes and did the same thing. I composited the two images together in post production.Editing
I set up the shot intentionally to composite in Photoshop afterwards. I first took several pictures of my fish swimming so that I could get the one I was most satisfied with in terms of movement, and then I took a photo of one of my snow globes. Both subjects had my Christmas tree in the background, so that the composite would be seamless and intentional. I really liked the way it turned out, but noted there was a lot of noise, just due to the poor lighting. I ended up using some masking with gaussian blurs to help reduce that noise, which gave the image a very painterly quality.In my camera bag
Normally I travel very light. I have my Nikon D810 body, my 35mm and my 85mm. And I'll keep a reflector in my trunk, just in case. You never know when you are going to need it!Feedback
If you are going to create a composite shot, you need to plan ahead. You need to make sure the lighting is the same, and coming from the same direction in all of your images you intend to use. You need to make sure your color pallet makes sens, the backgrounds make sense, and the quality of the image makes sense (for example, it's probably not going to work to composite a photo from your phone to a photo from your professional camera). The more specifics you lay out in the begnining the better. That isn't to say you can't make things work if they aren't perfect, you can, but you can cut out a lot of your workload before you begin. The most difficult part for me was masking the fish into the snow globe (this particular snow globe had a big reindeer in it.) But it was easier because I took the photo of the snow globe against the same background as I did teh fish, so the edges of where I was going to mask had a similar color and similar bokeh effect. It worked out very nicely!
