Shooting in aquariums is a challenge. If you’ve been reading this site for a while and have a good memory (or just found this site whilst searching for aquariums and have recently looked at some of my other posts), you’ll know from my trips to both the London Aquarium and the Bournemouth Aquarium that the environment is almost entirely set up to impede photography. The light is low, forcing a high ISO and with it more noise, and you’re shooting through optically imperfect Perspex with all sorts of reflections of the things you don’t want to photograph. Still, I’ve done this a few times now and I’m always up for shooting in challenging environments using whatever techniques seem to make sense to me, regardless of what is the ‘correct’ way. I suspect the correct way involves a wetsuit and being on the other side of the Perspex, so frankly I prefer my way.
It was back in 2021 on the wet first day of our summer holiday that we visited the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth. Back then I was shooting on my Canon EOS 60D with a 24-105mm f/4 L lens, the same equipment I had when I visited the Bournemouth Aquarium in 2015, but I was older and so in theory wiser on this trip. Even so, I knew shooting in aquariums is hard so I wasn’t expecting much from my photos.
Not brilliantly lit it may have been, but it was very colourful.
The fish in this tank had some very funny noses.
One of the things I like about these big tanks is you can often see other viewing windows on the other side. Here you can see a viewing dome of some sort in the background.
Please excuse the reflection of the person in the glass. As I said, it’s a occupational hazard when photographing in aquariums.
You can also see some of the other problems I’ve talked about in these images: the motion of the fish is blurred because I’ve had to go for slower shutter speeds, and there is clearly a lack of sharpness regardless due to the quality of the glass I’m shooting through.
Sometimes, at least, there was enough light to get some relatively sharp images.
Like many aquariums, Weymouth has some sections that are more water-adjacent than entirely water-based. The jungle section allowed for a shot of some backlit leaves.
And there was also a frog minding its own business, but it was a lovely colour.
I quite liked the view of his belly from the other side of the Perspex, and as I’ve done in the past on several occasions, if you can’t work around some of the conditions you’re shooting in, embrace and include them.
We soon came to another, better-lit tank, with some fish keen to say hello.
Here I was standing a bit back from the glass, so you can see some smears or scratches. There are also a lot of particles, but these were in the tank itself.
This is the part where my now-legendary inability to recognise species comes in. Hopefully you’re not here to find out what these things are, because the best I can offer you is that they’re fish. If you want anything more specific, unfortunately you’ll need to consult someone else. So I don’t know what these are either.
In another tank we found an octopus, and I managed to pull off a decent enough image of him.
One of my favourite parts of any Sea Life Aquarium (or at least the ones I’ve been to) is that somewhere near the end of the tour they will have a tank full of little jellyfish, illuminated by colour-changing LEDs. This makes for great photos, because it’s relatively well lit, the changing colours makes for interesting images, and the goal is to underexpose to get a black background which makes for generally better shots.
I know it’s a bit of a cheat as the jellyfish aren’t exactly this colour, but I still love the end result.
This is where things started getting a bit messy, and I was shooting a bit wide, so reflections or details from the other side of the tank were starting to creep into the shot. Before I moved on, I took a shot as the light turned to a more natural white, and you could see the jellyfish in something approaching their real colour.
We carried on outside into another water-adjacent area, which had some penguins in it. This is one of those places where the animals seem keen to see the visitors.
Well, most of them at least.
There was also this little baby one who didn’t look very pleased either.
In another tank was a turtle. This isn’t exactly a great shot if you want a detailed photo of a turtle, but I love the way the water has distorted it to the point it looks like a watercolour painting.
We finally looped back to go through one of the big tanks, giving me this parting shot of a lovely blue tank.
I think I’m getting better at photographing in aquariums. It’s never easy, and the results are always going to have compromises, but if you accept them or figure out ways to work around them, you can get some decent results. Or just photograph the LED jellyfish, which are my favourite bit.