Cunningly photographing elegant goldfish with a black background

What new discoveries will you make if you carefully observe the beautiful goldfish swimming in the fish tank? Photographer Hiroshi Iwasaki photographed the lines and details of the goldfish’s fins against a completely black background, adding lighting techniques , making this series of works as moving as art paintings.

Want to know how these photos were taken? Why not take out your camera and photography equipment and try to take pictures of the beautiful goldfish in the fish tank at home!

Japanese photographer Hiroshi Iwasaki tries to capture the elegant lines and texture details of beautiful goldfish swimming in the water with his lens. The photographer skillfully used a black background to emphasize the visual effect, highlighting the transparent fins, scales and lines of the goldfish, and used an exaggerated full-frame composition to make these photos look like art paintings. Through these images, photographer Hiroshi Iwasaki not only demonstrates his superb photography skills, but also truly demonstrates the elegance and beauty of goldfish.

If we also want to shoot similar image creations at home, how should we shoot it and what photography equipment should we prepare? Although the photographer did not mention the shooting methods and techniques on the work webpage, the author Let’s try to speculate as much as possible on the techniques and equipment that photographers may use.

Basic equipment: black background paper, square glass fish tank, water

Model: goldfish

Photography equipment: DSLR, macro lens, tripod, LED continuous Light source lighting (good spotlight effect), external flash, off-camera flash cable, white reflector, white styrofoam board

The placement of the fish tank and black background paper is the key to the success of this group of photos. The important key is that in order to prevent the black background paper from being worn by light, the black background paper should be kept at an appropriate distance from the fish tank. Next, the reason for choosing a square glass fish tank is that the light transmittance of a square glass fish tank is better than that of a round glass fish tank, and it is less likely to cause image refraction deformation and light reflection. Furthermore, the square glass fish tank is completely flat, which is convenient for macro lenses. Close up shot.

In terms of preparation of photographic equipment, you can first use a tripod to fix the LED continuous light source lighting and find a suitable angle to fill in the light. The author recommends that you try to fill in the light vertically from directly above the fish tank from top to bottom, and then Fix the camera's exposure value, and finally turn on continuous focus (AF-C) to shoot. If the light reflection on the surface of the fish tank is messy, it is recommended to turn off all light sources in the room to avoid unnecessary light interference.

If you want to try a flash to fill in the light, you must not shine it directly at the fish tank. On the one hand, it will cause light reflection, and on the other hand, it may damage the eyes of the goldfish. In this case, we can use the flashlight commonly available on the market. The light is disconnected from the camera line, and then the external flash is used to "jump light" upward to fill in the light. If you want to further enhance the effect of the jumping lights, you can consider placing a white Styrofoam board or a white reflective board parallel to the top of the fish tank to enhance the effect of the jumping lights.

In order to prevent the camera from catching the background light of the scene, you can increase the shutter speed to 1/250, narrow the aperture to F5.6-8, and the ISO brightness should not exceed 400. Finally, adjust the intensity of the LED light source. Weak or external flash output value, this should prevent the scene background light from interfering with the image.