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.