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The Basics of Fishing Photography

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Editors note: Click photos for larger version - where picture numbers are referenced, you can see the picture number by hovering your mouse over the photos.

Everything beyond the snapshot ventures into the infinite world of fine art photography. You want to capture a beautiful, special moment as a photograph. Only for yourself? Would you be satisfied with an 8x10 in your office, or is the scene deserving of a front and center 24x36 framed over your mantle? These days the potential to post/share pictures on the Internet is often listed as a goal, and if it never went further than that, things would be simple. But who wants limits?

If you see a good scene and can only take a good photograph, well, OK. But what if you see a great scene and can only take a good photograph. Being limited by your hardware is as frustrating as having a school of monstrous stripers breaking on bait ten feet further away than your medium equipment's casting range.

This is the basic, “I caught this” photograph. These constitute 90% of all fishing pictures. There is basic problem. Having just landed a new or unusual fish (for you), you are pumped up and filled with adrenaline. At that moment, that is the biggest, most beautiful fish you could imagine. If you throw it in a cooler or on a stringer that fish will start to shrink as your excitement fades. By the time you get home hours later, you will wonder what the hell happened to the fish you caught. This alone is the best reason for catch-and-release. A picture, any picture of that fish is not going to reproduce your awe and excitement.

I think we all are profoundly disappointed by our first fish photographs. The fish look so small and static. We get used to that as inevitable. What can we do to make the photographs approximate our excitement and how big the fish either looked to us or really was?

The single worst fish picture is the most common: a guy standing (back from the camera, whole body seen) in a parking lot at the end of the day, a dead fish hanging from a finger. That is a “proof of catch” picture. Given the photographic realities, the fish is always the smallest thing in the picture.

Here are Patricelli's Rules for a more interesting fish picture:

1) Fill the frame . I don't need (or want) to see the fisherman's feet, or belly, unless the fish's size dictates that as a necessity. A 16-inch fish hanging next to a 72-inch human will always look small and dinky by comparison! Fill the picture with the fish! (picture 4)

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2) Get closer! All snapshot cameras are set with wide angle lens settings. This simplifies focus, but exaggerates both distances and closeness. A person standing 10 feet away looks like 30 feet. And something two feet away looks one foot away. Use this lens characteristic to emphasize the fish's size. Stand close, hold the fish closer, until it either

fills the frame or is too close to focus.

3) Get the fish horizontal ! The horizontal presentation is more natural and therefore more interesting to the eye than a vertical fish. If the fish is too big to hold horizontal, then ok, I'm impressed. (picture 5) But also hold it square to the camera.

4) Take the picture of the fish while it's alive . A live fish is more interesting than a dead fish, even if it is doomed to become sashimi. The same is true for the fisherman. Take the picture as soon as the fish is caught. After 3 hours in the cooler it looks about the way it feels! And your excitement and wonderment is at it's peak as well.

5) Highlight the fish's best characteristics. It might be a Rainbow's red stripe, a Brown's long jaw, or a False Albacore's vermiculated, neon back striping. But this is what is interesting about this fish, so let us share it!

6) Try other poses . Head on, released away from the camera, Anything that varies from the stock postures will look more interesting. (picture 6)

7) Smile!

8) Show your face ! This can be quite complex to achieve, because it means not just getting enough light onto the face, but removing your sunglasses and hat. Ideally, for a quality photo, there should be fill-flash to eliminate the facial shadows. The more facial details the more food for the eye. On my personal list of details should be remove the cigar from my mouth and tuck in the geeky chin strap.

The above rules will make for a more interesting fish photograph, maybe even come close to capturing what you felt and what the fish looked like (to you). There are even more details that can be added, but that is only if you are striving for perfection. And if you were, you wouldn't be using a point-and-shoot camera.

As wildly subjective as it is to define, the single characteristic of all great images, paintings or photographs, is that they capture the eye and do not quickly release it. I consider a photograph successful if it captures and holds most people's attention for three seconds. A great photograph holds it for five, and the ones that make my year catch the same people's eye over and over each time they see it. It is a busy, competitive, visual world.

There are basic rules of composition. One should start composing the picture by satisfying the rules, and then break them only when you are sure that your variation looks better to your eye. Better yet, take a picture of each variation, and decide later. You can rarely re-create your scene.

1) Story . Great photographs tell a story. (picture 9)

 

2) Elements. Whether visual elements (color/shape) or story elements, ideally both, the more the better as long as they fit into a compositional whole and do not create clutter.

3) Horizon. The horizon should be in the upper or lower third of the image rather than in the middle. But keep the horizon horizontal! Tilted pictures can be corrected digitally with some effort, and usually must be.

4) Compose around, not in, the center . The major elements of the image should balance. (picture 10).

5) Depth. One should have near-, mid-range, and far elements to give the picture depth.. That way the eye-path “travels” through space through the image.

4) Resolution. Sharpness promises additional details and information and captures the eye. (picture 11) The secrets to getting sharp pictures are: a) use a tripod whenever possible, and lacking that, Squeeze off shots like you were target shooting, and use … b) the fastest shutter speed possible. This dictates … c) a wide open aperture. Luckily most lenses are most sharp either wide open or one stop closed from wide open. What one sacrifices is depth of field.. All my cameras are set on Aperture Priority - f-2.8 as all my lenses are f-2.8 lenses.

d) use the finest grain film possible, or the largest digital file size. (picture 12)
5) Blur . (picture 13) Blur is an element of movement. Some of my most successful photographs have occurred by accident, by either not realizing that the shutter speed was too slow, or when I was unable to stabilize the camera even when I did. Blur around sharp elements can bring a static picture to life! (picture 14)
6) Compose - shoot, shoot shoot: Compose- shoot, shoot, Zoom lenses are marvelous for letting the photographer rapidly scan all the compositional possibilities. And then shoot, shoot, shoot! A good photographer mines the situation for all the possibilities. (picture 15) Take several shots of the same composition, especially if hand-holding the camera. One will be sharper than the others. Then “bracket” the shot, vary the exposure up two stops and take several more, squeezing each one off . Then drop the exposure two stop and squeeze off another group. Zoom in, zoom out, spin the polarizing filter, check out every possible variation before you stop shooting.

Never think about the cost of film and development, those are the cheapest elements in the equation of your travel, license, gas, boat, camera, etc., etc.. Digital media eliminates the cost of film. One or two good shots a roll is great! (picture16) The sobering truth is a National Geographic photographer (the best of the best) may go on a six-month trip through the Amazon, shoot 6,000 rolls of film (36-exposure each) and just thirteen pictures might make the story in the magazine. (Picture 17)

About the author...

Raised in Seattle, Wa, I began fly fishing at age 13 and now, 45 years later, I am still amazed at how much there is to learn and how many more horizons there are still to cross. During my college years in Cambridge, MA and medical school in Boston in the 1960's I fell in love with salt water fly fishing, Striped Bass, and Cape Cod. I eventually chose to live in Oregon primarily to take advantage of the, then (now long gone), world class Striper fishery in the Umpqua River and still be among the trout, salmon, and steelhead of my youth. As a “starving” student I simply couldn't afford to continue to pursue photography until it was simplified and made affordable by computers, even before digital cameras, and picked it up again about the time the striper population on the east coast rebounded. Now I fish the east coast on the Cape, NC, and Florida almost more than I do in Oregon