Tropical Shark
This is one of those photographs where I tell people, “I’ll give you $10 if you tell me how I made this image!” So far nobody has ever been able to tell me. But, if you’re reading this, then the cat’s out of the bag. This image is actually as Bob Ross would put it, a “happy accident.” It’s actually a happy accident I’d like to go repeat, now that I know the results. My family and I were at Sea World in San Diego and of course my son and I wanted to visit the Shark Encounter. If you’ve never been there, there are areas of this massive aquarium where you walk through giant plexiglass tubes surrounded by water and all sorts of sea life including sharks. At one point I was tracking a shark above me and shot several images of it with the tree just off to one side and the interesting sky painted above lined up properly. The convex of the plexiglass tube combined with the light refractions and distortion of the water add so much unintended creativity to this image. When I returned home I didn’t even think about that image, until of course I downloaded it! What an interesting and artistic image! I quickly dropped it into Lightroom and began mixing colors and clarifying sliders etc etc. The final result is the image above. To me it feels like an image you can’t quite put your finger on. Is it a painting? Is it made with AI cause it looks surreal? Is it a mistake? No…. it’s art. And this art is now proudly hanging as a 4’ wide metal print in a doctors office in Santa Rosa, CA.
Details:
Canon 5D Mark IV
file type: RAW
Lens: 16-35mm L IS at 16mm
ISO 3200
Shooting Mode: AE
Shutter: 1/160
Aperture: f2.8
White Balance: Ambience priority
Exposure Compensation: -1/3
The biggest difficulty with making this image was holding still enough, yet track the shark at the same time, all while gliding on one of those mobile walkways. They don’t allow you to camp out in there and watch the sharks and for good reason. People would never leave! It is quite a fascinating place. I ran my ISO higher than I cared to, up to 3200 to hopefully get the shark sharp in my image. I waited for the palm tree to come into my shot but not overlap the shark. If the tree and shark, two dark objects were overlapping, you would lose the strength the shark commands in the image.
