<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12707849#post12707849 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by RevHtree
Yea when I looked through the TOTM the first thing I thought was DANG WHO TOOK THESE PICS......figures now! 
Dude the clown with the black background is so, so, very awesome as are all of them!
Thanks for the comments. I think I know which clown picture you are talking about, that's one of my favorites. I sure got lucky with the pose
My local reef club actually used this picture for the membership card as well. (I'm guessing you are talking about this one)
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12708252#post12708252 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by juniormc8704
i know ive asked before, but what is your photo setup?
im blow away every time i see a post from you.
I'm still using an "old" Canon 30D and I don't really see much reason to upgrade until I want to go to full frame (which will happen eventually). Good glass makes all of the difference in the world. I used my Canon 17-55 F/2.8 IS for the general tank shots and some of the fish shots, and then either my Canon EF-s 60mm F/2.8 macro or Sigma 150mm F/2.8 macro for the rest of them. The macro shots were used with my Bogen tripod 3001Pro legs and 488 RC2 ball-head and used with a remote shutter release.
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12708612#post12708612 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by maroun.c
Blazer as usual you excelled in those pics. Your compositions lighting focus... are great in each of those. Can you share your keepers/ non keepers rate? Can you share what type of PP is done on pics to get such quality?
I went a little different route with these pictures than the older ones from his tank. You can actually tell the older shots in the write up as they are generally brighter than the newer ones. I really wanted to have a lot of "black" space in these pics to make the corals pop better. The first shot of the sunset monti that melev posted is a good example of what I was wanting. I used Lightroom to start processing the RAW's, correct color (not much adjustment though), and I would play with the shadows/dark/light sliders until it popped. I would then export into CS3 to clone out any particles in the water to make it crystal clear, add a 50% gray overlay layer to darken the background to make the coral stand out more, remove noise (if any), and I also very sparingly used some LucisArt filters, and finally crop/sharpen. I'll be happy to post some original jpegs if you would be interested.
As for the keeper rate, I probably processed half of the pictures that I took. Some of the pictures that I posted were like 4-5 consecutive shots. I think I actually have a pretty high keeper rate when I shoot corals (probably 90%) and fish shots are a bit lower as you never really know what they are going to do and it's all about getting lucky with a good pose (like the clown fish above). That is probably something I couldn't duplicate if I had a week, lol. I hope that helps.
