Description

I think many photographers, due to their being common, disregard Lion fish as subjects for their photo’s, after spending four months diving in the Caribbean where Lion fish abound in un-maintainable numbers, you do get sick and tired of seeing them. Currently or at least when I took this photo I was spending most of my dive time on the reefs of Phuket and the surrounding island’s, Lion fish there are in proportionate numbers to everything else and many people have never seen them before so you have to kind of get it out of your head that these are boring fish.

To help do that I wanted to take a really nice photo of one, I had spent a few dives looking for them, finding them in sponges and other area’s messing about with close ups and composition, I got a few keepers too. But for me this was the best photo of the day, I remember taking it, but not exactly why, my thought was probably that it he wasn’t hiding on anything, so if I could get the right angle I could contrast him against the blue and greens of the ocean that day, what I hadn’t expected was the reflection of rainbow lighting that was bouncing of his pectoral fins from my lights.

When I sat down to edit the photos I noticed the vibrant colors on his splayed fins, I immediately wanted to know if this was just a trick of light, or whether the Lion fish was more colorful and vastly more interesting than I’d thought previously. So after some post processing and research, I can assure you that Lion fish do have this type of coloring in their fins, but you need powerful strobes or lights to make it stand out & you need to be nice and close. So happy hunting your own Lion fish photos.