Description

When I showed this photo to a few photographer friends on the boat I was on, not long after I’d taken it, I simply got the same response from each one of them, ‘OMG, I hate these fish’, or something with a few more swear words mixed in. Seriously, they are painful fish to get a good photo of, timid, shy, fast moving (oddly enough) and almost never face into your underwater lighting, it’s called a Yellow Box Fish, and this is the Juvenile (Ostracion cubicus), the adults are a little less timid for reference.

I’ll admit I was lucky with this specimen, it was feeding on algae, and seemed intensely preoccupied with the task at hand, which is why I even bothered to try for a shot. I thought, just maybe I can sneak up on the little guy and get a side profile shot, maybe..

I screwed on my macro lenses, switched on my lights, set my aperture to 11 and Shutter to 400, trust me these guys are faster than they look, then moved in for the kill. My intuition had been correct, he continued to feed, picking algae off the coral, not noticing me at all. As I got into position, he noticed me and turned to swim away, but in that moment I pulled my trigger and shot him face first at the perfect distance for my macro setup, resulting in this nice portrait shot, enjoy!