In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Close Up.”
This tiny box fish is a juvenile no larger than my thumb.
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Monthly Archives: July 2015
Underwater Photography 101: Cut your Fringe! Dealing with Chromatic Abberation
Have you ever had an image that could be great if only there wasn’t that weird blue/purple outline along your subject’s back? Well I have. And to tell you the truth, until someone pointed it out to me, I didn’t really notice how distracting it was. Meet “Chromatic Abberation,” a sketchy friend of a friend who lurks in shadows and has blue hair. Also known as “Color Fringing.”
Chromatic abberation happens when a lens is unable to bring all the colors in a wavelength into the same focal plane. The results are often a bluish or greenish outline around the subject or parts of the subject.
Below is an image of an Alleni nudibranch, a very uncommon creature. You can see a bluish tint around the bottom of its protruding lobes.
Fortunately, Adobe Lightroom has a fix for this! It can be found in the DEVELOP module in the LENS CORRECTIONS toolbox.
When you open this toolbox, you will see a menu across the top (Basic, Profile, Color, and Manual). Click on the word COLOR. From here you can try clicking in the box that says “Remove Chromatic Abberation.” Lightroom can automatically find the color fringing and reduce it. If this does not completely solve the problem, you can click on the eyedropper then click on the color that you want removed from your image. This will reduce the fringing even further.
In the image below, you can see that the color fringing has been greatly reduced, but there is still a little bit that lingers. Here is one more trick you can try:
Click on the “HSL/COLOR/B&W” toolbox. You will see the colors listed under Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. Try desaturating the offensive color slightly. In this case, the “blue” desaturation slider worked great.
Sometimes making small corrections like this makes all the difference between a good image and a great image.
To watch a video of this tutorial, click HERE.
If you have questions, or suggestions for underwater photography tips, please feel free to leave comments below.
As always, if you enjoy my images please visit my website, waterdogphotography.com, or give me a like on facebook at Waterdog Photography Brook Peterson. Don’t forget to follow me here at waterdogphotographyblog!
My photographs are taken with a Nikon D7000 or D810 in Sea and Sea Housing using two YS-D1 Strobes.
All images are copyrighted by Brook Peterson and may only be used with written permission. Please do not copy or print them. To discuss terms for using these images, please contact me
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Put on Your Red Velvet Cape
Weekly Photo Challenge: Three’s A Crowd
I thought it might be fun to participate in the Weekly Photo Challenge since the theme this week is one of my specialties! These yellow coral gobies make their home inside an empty beer bottle.
THREE’S A CROWD
To learn more about the weekly photo challenge, click HERE.
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Fun Facts about the Cuttlefish
Of all the interesting creatures in the sea, the cuttlefish has to be one of the most unusual. Though it bears the name “fish,” it isn’t a fish at all, but a cephalopod, which includes creatures such as octopus, squid, and nautiluses. The Cuttlefish wears its shell on the inside and is called a cuttlebone. This bone is used to help keep the cuttlefish neutrally bouyant. Many bird owners buy cuttlefish bones at pet supply stores for their birds to sharpen their beaks on. One of the remarkable things about cuttlefish, is their ability to blend in.
This cuttlefish has taken on the coloring and texture of the sand in which it has half buried itself.
This little guy is a fraction of the size of the cuttlefish in the above picture. No bigger than my thumb, it also takes on the color and texture of its surroundings.
One of the amazing things about this Cephalopod, is watching it feed. It has a very long “tongue” that slowly protrudes from it’s mouth until it is a fraction of an inch from it’s pray, then it quickly grabs it’s food and reels it in, in the blink of an eye.
The male and female pair below are courting. A male cuttlefish has four pairs of tentacles, while a female has three. Sometimes younger or weaker males may try to hide one of their pairs of tentacles by tucking them in so that they can approach a female unnoticed by other dominant males. When they mate, the male places a sperm sack inside the mouth of the female with one of his tentacles. She saves it until she is ready to fertilize her eggs.
One of the most exciting cuttlefish is the Flamboyant cuttlefish. This one doesn’t try to blend in at all. On the contrary, they are as colorful as can be, hence their appropriate name. Sometimes their colors will undulate so that it looks like its white stripe is moving down its body. They often hold up the two front tentacles in a “boxing” stance if they are feeling threatened.
Flamboyant Cuttlefish
As always, if you enjoy my images please visit my website, waterdogphotography.com, or give me a like on facebook at Waterdog Photography Brook Peterson. Don’t forget to follow me here at waterdogphotographyblog!
These photographs are taken with a Nikon D810 in Sea and Sea Housing using two YS-D1 Strobes.
All images are copyrighted by Brook Peterson and may only be used with written permission. Please do not copy or print them. To discuss terms for using these images, please contact me
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Meet the Giant Black Sea Bass
In the summertime, I always hope to see the Giant Black Sea Bass that swim along in the coastal waters of Southern California. The first time I saw one, I didn’t know how special the sighting was. I swam right up to it, snapped its picture with my point-and-shoot camera, and swam off looking for something else to photograph. It was four years before I saw one again. And that was from a distance. But last week I got a real treat. I was looking for the Giant fish in water that was a bit murky. I thought, “I’ll just go down by that rock and see if there is anything down there.” It turns out, the “rock” was a Giant Black Sea Bass. He didn’t seem to mind my presence, and let me snap around 50 images over 20 minutes before he moved in to deeper water.
These fish can grow to be more than 7 feet long and up to 800 pounds. This one was around 6 feet and 200 pounds. They are so large that when fully grown, their only predator is the great white shark and humans. They were hunted by humans almost to extinction in Southern California waters, until they became a protected species in 1982. Now they seem to be on the rebound, but you have to keep your eyes open and have a good bit of luck to see one.
An interesting thing about this fish is that it can cause its spots to come and go. But when it is dead, it appears very dark or black all over (thus the name, Giant Black Sea Bass.)
When these fish are in their first year, they transform from a black fish to a bright orange fish looking little like a Giant Sea Bass at all. But as they mature, they take on the characteristic coloring with large spots that is seen in the images above.
If you are scuba diving in Southern California in the summer months, a good place to see these fish is at Catalina Island, Santa Barbara Island or Anacapa Island. They are sometimes seen near shore as well.
As always, if you enjoy my images please visit my website, waterdogphotography.com, or give me a like on facebook at Waterdog Photography Brook Peterson. Don’t forget to follow me here at waterdogphotographyblog!
These photographs are taken with a Nikon D810 in Sea and Sea Housing using two YS-D1 Strobes.
All images are copyrighted by Brook Peterson and may only be used with written permission. Please do not copy or print them. To discuss terms for using these images, please contact me
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A Fish is a Fish is a Fish
I have been amused, while looking through images over the past year, at how many fish are called after another animal, or shape, or being! Some are called by these names because they resemble the thing they are named for, others because they have characteristics similar to those things. See if you can tell why each fish is named after something else:
Batfish
Scorpion Fish
Box Fish
Pipe Fish (Which are so diverse, I had to narrow it down to just these four)
Sea Horse (Which is also a Pipefish)
Frog Fish (Another very diverse species)
Clown Fish
Snake Eel
Baitfish
Angel Fish
