Amano a Amano

Section of new 30 Gallon Tank, 3 hours after planting. Canon 5D

“…a deep love for Nature, natural scenery, and the desire to have a piece of it in ones home, is a concept that exists in all human beings, irrespective of culture. The Nature Aquarium began as an aquaristic response to this desire. It is an art form, like painting, gardening or photography, in which it requires a person to create a natural ecosystem, in all its natural beauty and efficiency, in a glass aquarium.” – Takashi Amano

If I had to name the two things which I spend (waste?) the most time pondering, wondering, dreaming, planning, reading and generally absorbing my life they would be photography and aquascaping. It wasn’t until I read this statement above by Takashi Amano, a man who holds an almost god-like status in the planted aquarium tank world, that I realised how closely the two are related.

I believe that Amano says it pretty completely in his short statement, but what really struck me was not the passing commonality, but the almost identical motive, thought process and production of photography and natural aquarium keeping; the only real tangible difference being the medium. Cameras are also a lot easier to keep – they tend to survive quite well in a bag with no food for weeks on end. I guess I should clarify by stating that I am referring to landscape photography, as other forms of photography have other motives; but for me the whole purpose of landscape photography is to capture a slice of our environment, in its most emotive light and composition. Once captured I can view this photograph within my own dwelling at any time I chose and re-experience the feeling of being there, of witnessing the beauty of the natural environment. The motive and desire to keep a nature aquarium is almost identical. There are similarities too in how fastidious the photographer and aquarist are in ensuring that the lighting correctly mimics that experienced in the wild (only bad lighting in a photograph is rarely life threatening) and that the composition accurately portrays the slice of nature that is the subject. Photographers often “garden” a shot to remove (or add – yikes!) items from the field of view to ensure the right balance and message. (Of course there are others who strictly refuse to make any changes, Steve Johnson for example refused to remove a Coke can from a mountain scene in one of his huge scanning back images. In my mind a step to far in ethics). Even the final result of each activity are not dissimilar – the photograph hanging on the wall, the tank sitting against the wall; both very often rectangular, only one is live and multidimensional.

So with this realisation of association in hand, you would imagine that a lot of aquarists photograph their tanks – and they do, only badly in most cases. The reason for this is that it is not as easy as one would think. I have taken a number of aquarium shots – and can verify that unless you use the right equipment and techniques you are on to a loser. In ye olde days of film it was considerably more troublesome due to colour balance. Planted aquariums quite often use unusual lighting to promote growth – with colour temperatures varying it is tricky to balance daylight film with the lights available. The arrival of digital has eased this with the ability to balance the colour temperature after the shoot, but still requires careful filtering when mixing strobe and ambient light. Amano takes most of his own photographs, and is also very talented in this field. I would in fact go as far to say that his photography has done as much for his aquascaping business as the aquariums themselves; after all this is what most people see. His extremely successful equipment company, ADA, has afforded him the large format and strobe equipment he uses to produce his superb aquarium images. This is a man for whom anything less than perfection is unacceptable.

Although I do not possess the experience or equipment of Amano, I do however hope to get a lot more practice in, and see how close I can get to his standards. I am in the middle of arranging a deal with an aquascaping company to provide photography and a web site for their products and services, with the photographs also being used in their catalogue. So even if I cannot afford to buy all the Amano gear they sell, I can hang a photo of it on my wall – and give the fish something to dream about.

And On The 7th Day I Created The Universe!

Earbud photo taken with Canon 5D

A few months ago I was laying in the bath reading a magazine (as one does), the title of which escapes me, when I noticed a photograph of an iPod with the "earbuds" lying on top. It suddenly struck me how much an earbud resembles the USS Enterprise...

This kind of quirkiness is right up my street and I immediately decided I would photograph an earbud and put it in a space setting. As I mentioned, that was a number of months ago and although doing other things in the meantime, the idea has stayed with me. The main reason for not doing it earlier was a need to create a suitable space backdrop - as I don't have access to the Hubble Space Telescope!! Whereas, taking a photograph of an earbud is not all that challenging.

In the end it proved to be the case that creating a realistic star field with all the trimmings is not all that trivial. Although not counting, I would estimate that it took about 5-6 hours Photoshop work to complete the space scene shown above. Another slight issue was that I decided that I wanted it BIG. I knew I could take a large image of the earbud - and I wanted to be able to print it up to about one meter square - only at that size can you see the detail in the background. This meant working with a canvas size of 10,000x10,000 pixels. Needless to say on occasion this reduced my PC to a crawl. As this was my first attempt at a deep space location, I scanned the Net for various real images from space, and duplicated what I saw in Photoshop. I also ended up scanning a leaf to create a texture brush for the main planet. It is strangely pleasing to create whole galaxies, in a megalomaniac kind of way!

Then came the easy part, photographing the earbud (kindly donated by my girlfriend). The only tricky part there was keeping sweat away from the camera and subject as it was a baking hot day (around 40°C) and the air conditioning could not be used as it blew the hanging earbud all over the place. It was also the first time I have shot tethered with the 5D - which turned out to be a godsend, not having to hunch over the camera I could hold the reflectors in place and trigger the shutter at the same time - note the lighting, adjust without having to move.

Some more Net crawling in the land of Star Trek (it seems the internet was created for Trekkies) to check out how their engines "work", and some time re-creating in Photoshop. Actually that was harder than expected, due to the fact that the cable had to be cloned out (I doubt my cutting the cable would have met with enthusiasm), and the inner engine bay created. It can't really be noticed here, but when printed the inside of the engine bay can clearly be seen, so something had to be done. Making that more complicated was the fact that when I created it there was no light coming from the engine, so I had to make it just dark enough to have detail that would then be brightened when the engine flame was added. That done it was time to add the actual flame - in true Star Trek blue.

Then it was just a case of font matching and adding the text - and to try to see if a motion blur worked. Still not sure about that, but decided to leave it in.

The things I do!

Ultimate Convergence

Quite by coincidence the subject of my post Epiphany #3012 has also been the subject elsewhere in the internet since writing.

First up came an article by Michael Reichmann entitled "When Pretty Isn't Enough". Having been a long time admirer of Michael's photography and his writing at the Luminous Landscape, I feel somewhat satisfied in my own conclusions - even though his photography is much more accomplished than mine.

In addition to Michael's article, and again I believe not related directly, there have this week been some related posts at Mike Johnston's site, The Online Photographer. As with Michael Reichmann, Mike is a superb writer of photographic pursuits and, although possessing a somewhat more educated eye in the world of the arts than I, appears to be a kindred spirit in terms of views on photographic subject. Although most of the postings, and uncommonly even most of the comments, are very well thought out and put together, there are two that relate specifically to my earlier post mentioned above. The first was contributed by Paul Butzi, entitled "Distrust of Beauty", which presents his concerns for the extreme reaction to the reluctance to shoot typically aesthetic scenes, in other words the trends of only shooting the un-attractive. Mike himself made a post, entitled "And Speaking of Definitions" a few days after Paul's, in which he expresses his opinion on the importance of truth and honesty rather than some indefinable beauty.

My point here is not to proximate myself with these guys, as all of them have infinitely more experience in writing, the photographic business and as photographers, but it in some way confirms to me at least that I am not alone in my beliefs and that the subject is one worthy of discussion.

Empty Deck Chairs

It’s strange, I live in a beach town and yet there is hardly anyone to be seen on the beaches. In fact the people that you do see there are usually locals, munching on chicken bones before tossing them onto the, already grey with grim, sand. Yet, it is amongst the most highly foreign populated areas in the world – so where are they?

Grossly over-generalising, for the purposes of explanation, there are a number of ex-pat types residing here:-

There is the fifty-something (upwards) type (Type 1), who landed here in search of pleasant climes, the ability to live out their days in a far more grandiose manner than their savings would have allowed in their originating country together with the opportunity to meet a lady who will genuinely make them believe they are cared for. Admittedly a more pleasant prospect than bingo on Tuesdays; while sharing anecdotes with the blue rinse brigade about how little you get for your money these days.

Continuing my gross over-generalisation, the next type (Type 2) is the 25-50 year old age group, who arrive after earning what appears to them to be a stack of cash, and an over-inflated idea of themselves. As a friend commented last week, “They arrive at the airport talking telephone numbers, then after 3 months are broke.” These are the types who brag about their ability to spend ridiculous sums of money in bars each evening, and of their female conquests; then progress to “investing” money in properties. A few months down the line, that stack of cash that seemed so bottomless has migrated to the pockets of various bar girls, or more specifically their families and the solid and wise house investment turns out to be just that, for the luck lady whose name it was purchased under.

My last type (Type 3) is that of the more savvy ex-pat, who may have even made money in the home country legitimately. This type transcends the other two types, but manages to rarely lose sight of the traps laid out, investments are carefully planned and ownership strictly kept by any means possible. For as many establishments available to the former two types’ entertainment, there is a proportionate amount of establishments for this type; higher class bars, very accomplished restaurants, even Rotarian membership beckons.

There are of course plenty of ex-pats here whom do not fit neatly into any of these types, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Whether my analysis is accurate or not, one thing seems for certain, the place traps people. As with every ex-pat community in the world, the talk is generally of complaint for their living circumstances – and yet few manage to liberate themselves from their self-imposed exile.

So you see everyone is catered for here, no wonder the deck chairs are empty.

So where do I fit in, and if I am so scathing why do I choose to stay? Well due to the circumstances in which I found myself here, and actually being in a paid job at the time, I was lucky enough to learn from type two’s mistakes, without making them myself. Since leaving the comforts of a relatively stable paid employ, I find myself drifting into the Type 3 mould, but without the desire to be entrenched in local activities; be they social or financial. Of more concern is that now the intangible tentacles have entangled me, only time need be added to complete the metamorphosis into a Type 1.

“The sad engineer would never go back to England; he would become one of these elderly expatriates who hide out in remote countries, with odd sympathies, a weakness for the local religion, an unreasonable anger, and the kind of total recall that drives curios strangers away.” - Paul Theroux, 1975.