Photographing your catch

As many anglers start to understand the benefits of catch and release fishing, more want to take photos of their catch. The photos can be for your personal records or to show your mate down the road “that you really did catch a cod over a metre”. Either way, taking a better photo of your catch will ensure you have something nice to look at in years to come.

Some of us also wish to submit articles to fishing magazines, and to do this, good photos are a must.

Photographic techniques

When it comes to taking photos, it doesn't matter what camera you are using, whether it be a digital camera or a film camera the general principals are the same.

A great place to start is reading the camera manual so you can get a good understanding of your camera and how it works. It also is very important that you put your camera on the highest quality setting (if digital of course) before you start taking photos. You can always reduce the size and quality of the photo later, but you can't work the other way!

Fill Flash – a must!

When taking photos of people during the day - typically in sunny conditions - shadows are a killer. Using some ‘fill flash' here will help in reducing or eliminating these shadows. The two photos below show the difference in shadow around the face and eyes and on the shirt.

Harsh shadows (bad) - No flash	Shadows reduced (good) - Flash used

Focus

It is important to focus on the subject. In which case it will be the fish in our fishing photos. Most cameras have a few dots or a small box in the middle of the viewfinder which allows you to focus where you like.

You can half hold the shutter release (button which takes the photo) to focus on the fish, then recompose the shot (still holding the button half way down) and take the photo. We'll go more into composition later. Here are two separate shots, the first shot shows the focus on the background and not the angler with the fish. The second photo shows the focus on the fish and the angler.

Incorrect focus (focused on background)	Correct focus (on fish and angler)

Composition

One of the most important aspects of photography is composition. If the background can add to a photo to make it a better, then the photographer will try to get the background to complement the foreground or subject. However, when taking photos of people holding fish the background can sometimes be very distracting. The most common distracting background is a bright, overexposed sky. This is becase there is much more available light in the sky compared with the light available on the subject. Avoid as much sky as possible.

In this image on the right, the background adds to the photo by telling some of the story. The anglers disbelief informs the viewers that the knot wasn't meant to give way and the fish of a life time may have just gotten away.

Things to avoid with composition

• Crooked horizons. A crooked horizon can wreck a perfectly good photograph. The image shown on the right is well exposed, nice composition, great focus and sharpness, minimal shadows on the angler's face but has a severely crooked horizon. With the aid of software such as Photoshop it is easy to fix these problems later on, but it is even easier to be aware of the horizon when taking the photo initially.

• Avoid excessive background unless it adds positively to the photo. Try to keep the fish and angler as tight as possible. Things like a messy boat, bright skies and unrelated things should be avoided. Moving closer to the subject as well as framing the image tighter (zooming in) will make the fish look larger and stand out much more then standing 5 metres away and capturing more background than subject.
  The subject is the most important part of the photograph so, it should dominate the amount of space on the photograph!

Cameras

Canon 350D Digital SLR with 18-50mm f/2.8 EX lens

Digital cameras have been around for a fair few years now, and good quality cameras have come into an affordable price range. The difference between digital and film cameras is just the image recording medium. Originally film recorded the image whereas now digital cameras use an image sensor.

The advantage of digital is you can take and delete as many photos as you want, whenever you like. You can also review the photos on a small LCD screen at the back of the camera and can plug the camera straight into your computer and view your photos. This saves the hassle (and the expense) of going down to the local camera store to print out a few rolls of film.

It was believed that film cameras could print better and larger photos than digital cameras and this was the case a few years ago, but now a high end digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex) will produce much better quality prints than an equivalent film SLR, simply because there isn't any quality lose through scanning the slide film. A 5-mega pixel point and shoot camera can produce decent prints up to about A4 and will produce great photos at 6x4 inch (standard photograph).

What do I look for in a camera?

If you are just after a camera to take the occasional fishing photo, photos of birthdays and the like, than you can get a great digital camera for under $350 AU. Things to look out for are:

• Memory card type (SD or CF as the most common, most reliable and cheapest)
• amount of mega pixels (minimum of 4 or 5)
• amount of optical zoom (at least 3x)
• modes (ability to set and use manual functions)
• accessories (amount and price)
• battery type (AA are cheap and easily purchased, camera specific batteries can be expensive)
• Shooting speed (amount of frames per second, the higher the better)

What is just marketing dribble?

• Digital zoom is a waste of time. It zooms in on the recorded image and reduces the quality of the photograph severely.
• Long-term warranties are a waste of money. You will be lucky to get more then 2 or 3 years out of the camera before you wish to upgrade. Do not waste your money on a 4 or 5 year warranty.
• Direct printing from the camera to the printer. This is not necessary. It is much better to put the images on the computer, adjust them using software such as Photoshop or the software that came with the camera and then print from your computer or take the images to be printed properly which is usually cheaper than doing it yourself anyway.