Reef tanks can be quite challenging to shootAt its core, the reef aquarium hobby is a pursuit of aesthetics. We seek out visually appealing fish and corals and look for inspiration in other aquarists’ tanks. More and more reef hobbyists want to share their hobby with others online, and that’s when things fall apart. It is not that there’s a problem with the reef tank, but that the photo taken doesn’t do the real thing any justice. Sometimes, the photo just comes out with the colors wrong or the exposure messed up so the bright areas are just lost in overexposed blotches. There have been times when people show me pictures of coral they found online and I have to explain to them that in real life, it will not look like that because most of the aesthetics that grabbed their attention in the first place were visual artifacts in the taking of the photo that exaggerated the color. Most of the time, this is unintentional on the part of the photographer.Our reef tanks happen to be among the most challenging subjects to shoot. Chief among these challenges is the fact that our aquariums are dark subjects.
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