The spectacular Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies in Gatlinburg, Tennessee isn't what you would normally think of as a wildlife park, but with respect to marine wildlife, it is nothing less. This is a world-class aquarium that offers exceptional photographic opportunities. Last month I visited the aquarium and took so many wonderful images in a relatively short amount of time that my camera was practically smoking!
The two photos I included here are of a sand tiger shark and a sea dragon. The shark looks like I was actually underwater because the exhibit in which I photographed it was a tunnel. Above me and on each side was a huge aquarium, and exotic as well as frightening creatures swam or rested just a few feet from where tourists can observe them. The shark was swimming very slowly right above my head -- perhaps four feet away.
I was using a flash, and I knew that reflections in the thick lucite wouldn't be a problem because of my angle. In physics, there is a law that says, "The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflectance." This simply means that as light strikes a surface, like glass or plastic, it bounces away at the same angle but in the opposite direction. So, if I shot the shark at an angle of, say, 45 degrees, instead of the flash reflecting back into the lens of the camera, it reflects away from the subject at 45 degrees.
My main concern was blowing out the highlights. The ventral side of the shark was white, and since digital cameras have little exposure latitude in the highlights, I shot in RAW mode (this is the first line of defense against overexposed highlights) plus I underexposed the picture by one full f/stop. This was my insurance. As is turned out, I was 2/3 f/stop underexposed. In the RAW converter, this was an easy matter to correct. Using the exposure slider bar, I simply brightened the image until it was perfect.
To make the photo even more perfect, and more like it was taken in the ocean, I replaced the original black background with a picture I'd taken in Sea World in San Diego. This was a simple cut and paste procedure that took about 10 minutes.
The seadragon was in a small exhibit. This is one of the most beautiful and intriguing creatures I've ever seen and photographed. Unfortunately, the background was too artificial to work as a realistic underwater shot, so I had to replace this background as well. Notice the subtle gradient of tone, though, from blue at the top to bluish-black at the bottom. This was done with the gradient tool in Photoshop, and it gives a more realistic rendition of what it really looks like underwater.
Hi Jim--I just wanted to thank you for your most informative and interesting blogs. I look forward to my "photo tutorial" every day!
Posted by: Debra Kuzbik | May 31, 2005 at 11:54 AM