Description
LOCATION: La Paz, Mexico
STORY: Creolefish (Paranthias colonus) are hyperactive plankton-pickers, meaning they let food come to them, and snag tasty bits out of the water column as they pass by. And they thrive in high current zones – high enough to make me kick at almost my maximum in order to hold still. But of course, the creolefish are built for these conditions, and barely have to put in any effort. This gave my the idea to want to show the current in a photograph – and since water movement itself is for all intents invisible, I needed to show it with the movement of the fish. Using a long exposure allowed me to show their movement, and the light from my flashes freeze the movement. The resulting scene is not only filled with color that we couldn’t otherwise see, but also has a three-dimensional effect that makes us feel immersed in the scene. Most of La Paz’s reefs are rocky, and the orange cup coral that grows prolifically forms baseball-sized clusters along the bottom and sides of every available structure.
Similar photos worthy of consideration include the lionfish image The Pride and the red coral in Whip It Good.
For printing, Fish on Fire is flexible for cropping away from it’s native ratio of 3:2 into 2:1 vertical panoramic art, and is available in huge art sizes up to a maximum of 200″ tall. You can purchase this luxury wall art online in our standard sizes, but if you’d like to discuss a custom crop or size, please contact one of our design consultants at the art gallery.