Pumkinseed Sunfish Portrait

Pumpkinseed fish
Pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus)

Not everyone can afford fancy underwater photography equipment, or have enough time to hone the skills required for this discipline.  While I am exploring the possibility for getting environmental shots with a GoPro Hero it will be difficult to impossible to capture photographs of small animals.  For this reason I use the aquarium and flash lighting.
The set up to photograph the Pumpkinseed fish I used a very simple set up.  Since the aquarium was large I used my Nikon D100 hand held so I could follow my subject around the aquarium.  For lighting I used a Nikon SB-80dx on a sc-28 flash cord.  The flash was simply placed on top to the glass aquarium lid.  The setup for the flash though is rather dangerous for it, ans it can easily fall from the top onto the ground, so I had to be careful.  It would have been better to mount it to a tripod, or a light stand, but on a tripod it would have been too far away and I had no light stand at the time. Another option is to hand hold the flash, which works, but is very awkward and leads to unstable hold on the camera.  With either of those methods it would be easier to control the lighting, but my somewhat laze technique worked.  The result photos of a few of my other fish and this Pumpkinseed, which I regard to be one of the most attractive of our freshwater fish.
Perhaps I’ll dive into underwater photography someday, but until then the aquarium is a great option.  Did I just use that dive pun, my apologizes…
Click link to purchase pumkinseed photo
 

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