Macro Photography

The reef has been running 8 years 9 months.  Picked up a new acropora from Aquashella over the weekend called Master Yoda.

Over the weekend, I picked up a new lens and a couple of attachments, and yesterday I got a chance to try them out. I'll be posting more images soon.

I purchased a 15mm wide lens for my Nikon D500, and a couple of Raynox magnifiers that fit most of my lenses.

Lens: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A9V8ZOC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I haven't blogged on my own website in what feels like "much too long" and tonight after getting back from dropping off shipments for my customers, I decided it was time to insert the walkboard, climb up upon it and take a few pictures of some corals from above.  My reef is looking so pretty day after day, and most of my updates seem to take place mostly on my youtube channel. Feel free to remind me to update things here, as there are times when it's nice to just read a quick update on the latest.

I'm behind on blogging - and that's not good.  Overall, things are just growing quietly. I took a bunch of pictures, primarily from above. That's because the best view is from that vantage. If you aren't making it a point to look down on your reef from time to time, you're definitely missing out.

All pictures were taken with a Nikon D90 and a 35mm lens with a low f-stop. 

I wanted to discuss that feeling that you get when you take a picture of your aquarium. Everything looks perfect to your eye, but the camera gives you a blue picture that seems less focused, slightly rounded, and overall it seems rather meh. Nothing that makes you want to share those images with others, at least not with any sense of pride.

Continuing from the previous blog, here are a few more actinic shots. I really wanted to capture a decent reflection shot, but the blue lighting doesn't help make it easy.

Taking pictures when all you've got are blue LEDs shining can be frustrating. Bottom line, it's unlikely you can take and share them instantly. The best method is to load them into some photo-editing software, and do some color correction to share something pretty others would appreciate.  I took about 100 pictures over the past 24 hours, and these were the ones that I felt were the most worthy.  I used Lightroom for post-processing.

I've been observing this one area of my reef for a while, which is pretty much in the center of the 400g. The sunset montipora of course is vivid and beautiful, but the leading edge of the rock -- what's going on there?

For the past few days, I've been watching the film algae grow on the glass of all my tanks and just wasn't motivated to clean it off.  My guilt grew worse as I imagined the fish were disgusted with these conditions and I swiped all the panes clean today. Within a couple of hours, my beautiful corals were visible again and of course the urge to take some pictures struck again.