CCA – February 2007 Meeting

The Capital Cichlid Association’s February meeting was one of the best meetings I’ve been to in a long time. This month’s meeting was less of your typical meeting, and more of a photography workshop. The organizers setup three tanks, with three beautiful African cichlids in them. Surrounding the tanks were the proper barriers, backgrounds, and flash equipment to get the perfect shot. Basically, they setup the right environment so that you can come, armed with your best camera, to try to make the shot.

The meeting opened with three brief talks, describing a few tips for photographing fish. Basically, get as much light above the tank as possible. Shoot at a F11-F18 to make sure the whole fish is in focus. And, if possible use at least one flash unit over the aquarium, and possibly a second flash on the side as a “fill” light. Other than that, clean your glass, be conscientious of reflections, and if all of that fails, clean the image up in Photoshop.

Here’s an image that I captured. I had to do a little bit of Photoshop work to clean it up, but overall I think it looks okay. Not the greatest, but okay. If nothing else, this is one beautiful fish!

Of course, after the workshop, we had the regular mini-auction and raffle. I decided to try daphnia for the first time. So far, the fish love ’em — big surprise!