Brown Trout

[FrankMi]

I had a chance to stop by L.L.Bean Outfitters in Freeport, Maine. What a neat place! One of the things on display was a huge streambed aquarium. All kinds of river fish swimming around. On the caught my eye was a rather handsome Brown Trout. (At least that's what I think it is!)

I thought I’d snap a shot with my cell phone but alas, the reflections off the store displays, lighting, and myself on the aquarium glass made getting a good capture all but impossible.

I tried shooting from different angles, trying to block the reflections and all kinds of silly gyrations but to no avail.

When I go back home I thought I would try to see if anything could be salvaged. I took the one with the least reflections so here is what I started with:



I then took a look at what else I had captured on my cell phone that night:



It was obvious that if I wanted to minimize the reflections, I would also need to piece together parts from various images so the first thing I did, starting with the trout, was to align the shots. In this case, Auto-Align went bananas as in every image the trout kept moving so I had to do the alignment manually.



Starting at the nose, I aligned the best shots I could locate until I had the trout as close to alignment as I could get with as few reflections as possible.



Try as I might I still had a huge reflection on the tail that I couldn’t clear and still retain the lighting and shading so I made duplicate of this composite, flipped it vertically, and merged the bottom of the tail with the top of the tail in the duplicate shot. So far so good, but the background is still laced with reflections.

Setting the saved clean copy of the trout aside, I went through the same process with the background. Unfortunately, the background had much more serious reflections so between merging multiple copies and cloning out what couldn’t be merged over, I had a reasonable background to work with.



Now I could mask out the previously saved trout, now, very much a fish out of water!



When I placed the masked trout in front of the de-cluttered background I finally have addressed most of the reflections and something close to what I was trying to capture with my cell phone that evening.



I hope you enjoyed my fish story!

Whew! that took longer than I was expecting. I'll take a bit of a break, than get back to my other 'fishy' set of images of an Albacore.

[Mike Buckley]

I hope you enjoyed my fish story!

I certainly did! Thanks for taking the time to explain what you did. Such a success!

[Rebel]

I've caught a brown trout and gutted and cooked it on the site of a lake... tasted sublime!

[Otavio]

It seems you had a hard task, Frank. Anyway, it certainly paid any minute you spent on it. Great final result. Thanks for sharing and explaining the process. Cheers,

[Dave Humphries]

Frank, you are the master of the 'silk purse from a sow's ear', my friend

The lengths some people will go to to prove the fish the caught (on camera)

Now, show us the contra-rotating Albacore props please!

Cheers, Dave

[John 2]

And they used to say "a photograph doesn't lie" - then Adobe came along. Great workflow , excellent result. Thanks for sharing your technique.

[Shadowman]

Nice effort.

[Marie Hass]

Frank,

Cool! Really Cool! I admire your perseverance and your story. You did a great salvage job.

'Rie

[Rita]

Thanks for sharing Frank. Sounds like a lot of work but the result is worth it.

[bnnrcn]

Thank you very much for sharing and explaining how you created such a neat image Frank, great job

[FrankMi]

Thank you all that took the time to comment and provide feedback.

Part of the reason I experiment with these kind of projects is see what kind of beauty is hidden and just waiting to be revealed.

Although I believe in 'getting it right in camera' whenever possible, over the years I have come to realize that there are a wide variety of images that simply can't be obtained by just pressing the shutter button regardless of the shooting skill and equipment involved.

[Mike Buckley]

I have come to realize that there are a wide variety of images that simply can't be obtained by just pressing the shutter button regardless of the skill and equipment involved.

Doing more than just pressing the shutter release would have been required, but the shot could have been achieved without incurring the unwanted reflections. I've often read that the primary requirement would have been to using an off-camera flash held at about a 45-degree angle to the glass.

[Loose Canon]

Although I believe in 'getting it right in camera' whenever possible, over the years I have come to realize that there are a wide variety of images that simply can't be obtained by just pressing the shutter button regardless of the skill and equipment involved.

Those are the kinds of images I enjoy shooting most!

[FrankMi]

Doing more than just pressing the shutter release would have been required, but the shot could have been achieved without incurring the unwanted reflections. I've often read that the primary requirement would have been to using an off-camera flash held at about a 45-degree angle to the glass.

I'll need to give that a try Mike. Thanks for the tip!

I'm guessing that the much brighter light from the flash would minimizes the exposure and thereby reduce the amount of reflected light? That might be worth a try assuming that the 45° angle is what you would want for the scene.

[IzzieK]

Well worth the effort of an edit, Frank...Your play around took you how many days??? I thought you were joking about editing a Brown Trout in the Albacore post..it is a really a trout...!!!

Enjoyed your "fishy" tail tale...

[FrankMi]

Well worth the effort of an edit, Frank...Your play around took you how many days??? I thought you were joking about editing a Brown Trout in the Albacore post..it is a really a trout...!!!

Enjoyed your "fishy" tail tale...

I think I played for about four hours on this one Izzie. But, because I had done similar exercises, I had a fairly good feel for the sequence of steps needed. Part of the reason for the detail in this post was to share that sequence of steps so that others could play along with there own images if they wished to do so!

Preparation begins when you realize that the subject can't be captured with a simple push of the shutter button. In this case, image two holds the secret to success. The trout is constantly moving so no two images will match and why Auto-Align doesn't work. Also, the camera angle must be moved between shots to change the position of the reflections in the frame. This is why many of the trout images only captured part of the trout. However, it also results in having the ability to combine the parts of the trout that don't have reflections using merging techniques.

Fortunately, the background is much more forgiving so we can afford to deal with harsher reflections using cloning techniques that would have ruined the trout. Shooting has to concentrate on getting the subject as reflection free as possible at the expense of the reflections on the background.

Even though the only camera available at the time was my cell phone, using shooting and post processing technique that is appropriate for the subject allows you to achieve your results. Obviously, a studio setup would have made the capture much easier. I Hope this makes sense!

[FrankMi]

Frank,

Cool! Really Cool! I admire your perseverance and your story. You did a great salvage job.

'Rie

Hi Marie, my thoughts were not so much to salvage the shot after the fact as they were to plan how I would capture and render the scene before pressing the shutter. It is less about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear as it is of getting a great capture under less than ideal circumstances.

Part of the fun I have with photography is in trying to get great images where others might not be tempted to try. I don't always succeed but learning what can and can't be accomplished is rewarding in itself.

[Mike Buckley]

I'm guessing that the much brighter light from the flash would minimizes the exposure and thereby reduce the amount of reflected light?

I don't think that's the explanation. Instead, it has to do with the family of angles. I've never seen the situation as it applies to photographing an aquarium explained but I think the concept is the same as when photographing a flat work of art such as when using a copy stand.

The flash needs to be outside the family of angles. If the camera is directly facing the glass, this occurs when the flash is positioned at about a 45-degree angle but that varies according to how close the camera is to the flash. EDIT: Correct that by changing "flash" to "glass." The farther away the camera is from the glass, the greater the angle can be for the position of the light because the family of angles is smaller. All of that is explained beginning on page 53 of the fourth edition of Light: Science & Magic.

[FrankMi]

I don't think that's the explanation. Instead, it has to do with the family of angles. I've never seen the situation as it applies to photographing an aquarium explained but I think the concept is the same as when photographing a flat work of art such as when using a copy stand.

The flash needs to be outside the family of angles. If the camera is directly facing the glass, this occurs when the flash is positioned at about a 45-degree angle but that varies according to how close the camera is to the flash. The farther away the camera is from the glass, the greater the angle can be for the position of the light because the family of angles is smaller. All of that is explained beginning on page 53 of the fourth edition of Light: Science & Magic.

Ah, I understand completely, Mike. Unfortunately I had absolutely no control over the angles of the sources of light, only over the shooting angle. One thing I could do to minimize the reflections was to get the cell phone as close to the glass as possible but without really wide angle lens the crop was severe and the focusing, problematic. I couldn't use the flash at all for the reasons you mention above so I had to work with available store lighting.

[Mike Buckley]

Ah, I understand completely, Mike.

I hope you understand it so completely that you caught my error: The approximate 45-degree angle changes according to how close the camera is to the glass, not the flash. I have now corrected my post.