Hello!

I was wondering what you guys think about the Dark Ambush picture in this weeks contest. I’m a little discouraged by the lack of votes it has considering I was so excited about it. Coming back from Philippines using a stroble on my compact digicam for the first time I was pretty excited about this shot.

The shot is of a big frogfish that I found in a small hole in a rock. Later I found there were actually 3 frogfish (two right next to him) in the same place and a small orange fish on top of him. Some people I’ve shown it to just think I took a picture of coral and didn’t see the frogfish until I explained it to them.

Anyways, all critiques are welcomed.

Thanks!

Jason

Hey jason,

thanks for the great shot. I can understand your excitment and
your disappointment very well. I know how happy I was getting
the first good exposed images underwater and you even got a
very rare motive, too.

I think one problem with the image, although it is good exposed,
is that the viewer needs really hard to see what it is and to figure
out whats the main subject.

ciao Lars

Thanks for the response. Interesting. I thought it would make it a more interesting picture if it wasn’t so clear what it was and then when the viewer takes a better look at it, they realize it’s a fish. I think I was trying to be more creative than the standard shot of the frogfish that everyone sees.

Perhaps if I got more of an angle (rather than shot straight on) to reveal more of his right side things would be more clear. One thing I like about the picture is that the small fish on top of the frogfish’s head has no idea it’s on a fish.

Anyways, thanks for the response. I’ve submitted another picture (different fish) for this weeks contest. It’s a lot more clear as to what it is.

- jason

With creatures like this the key is to direct the shot so that the animal
pops out from its camoflaged surroundings. One of the easiest ways to
do this is to move the strobe around until you find an angle that makes
the subject seem 3d compared to the background.

You actually did a good job, of attemtping to do tha IMO, what you
didnt do was get enough facial information, such as the mouth.

Also IMO if thisd shot was possible to have shot upwards .. it would
have been more appealing. But sometimes this is not posasible.

Take a look at the other frogfish photo, I don’t think it is as good as
yours, but it beat yours. That is as it is a tighter crop on the face.
People recognised it. I would say yours is a better photo just needs to
be framed differently.

Also in this competition, I believe the important thing is to have a
photo that stands out as a Thumbnail .. to grab people attention to
see it bigger and then vote for it. That isn’t a very usual thing for
photo competitions but you can use it to your advantage here.