Molix WTD 110. Studio shot in a fish tank

Molix WTD 110. Studio shot in a fish tank, a photo by Nicola Zingarelli on Flickr.

These aquarium or fish tank shots are becoming a sort of trademark of my work within the fishing tackle industry. I learnt how to make them through Flickr, in fact one day I found the photos of a guy that was shooting old wooden lures in a plastic bowl and the result impressed me.

I had a small fish tank built for me and started playing with the lights and the lures splashing. I did my first attempts with a white background, way easier to handle, and then switched to a black background, more tricky yet with a better outcome. The problem is not the shot itself but the post production work that it takes to achieve a clean result, in fact, as you can imagine, bubbles and reflections – desired or not – are the by catch of such shots.

For this kind of photos I use quite a simple set up. Here we have two lights, one is on camera right higher than the lure at a 45º angle and the other one is on camera left more or less at the same height as the lure. The higher speedlight goes through a Honlphoto Grid, for a better control of the light, while the other flash as bare or sometimes with a small softbox, like Lumiquest Softbox III.