Neptune Aquatics

Thoughts on Photography and Buying Corals online?

Matthew Meyer

Matthew Meyer

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How does everyone feel about how corals are photographed in the hobby?

I personally keep my tank looking more white than I see in the LFS. Online sales and pictures always are incredibly heavy on the blue spectrum. Now I am seeing more and more black backgrounds with more and more foreground lighting.

I understand that people want to really see the colors when they buy, but to what extent? The coral will not look the same in the tank with different backgrounds and drowning in blue light.

For these reasons I only buy coral in person. I wish pictures didn't alway feel so inflated in our hobby.
 
Battle Corals and Tidal Gardens both do photos with different spectra which is very helpful. I keep things closer to 14K at peak and ramp up and down to more 20k+, so I appreciate when local stores will do a quick shift of their lighting if I ask or keep things more balanced.

Orange glasses are a must at the CFM however...
And the opposite at the frag swaps where a blue flashlight helps!
 
Matthew Meyer said:
How does everyone feel about how corals are photographed in the hobby?

I personally keep my tank looking more white than I see in the LFS. Online sales and pictures always are incredibly heavy on the blue spectrum. Now I am seeing more and more black backgrounds with more and more foreground lighting.

I understand that people want to really see the colors when they buy, but to what extent? The coral will not look the same in the tank with different backgrounds and drowning in blue light.

For these reasons I only buy coral in person. I wish pictures didn't alway feel so inflated in our hobby.
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The only thing worst than instagram photos of what women's bodies look like is online photos of corals. It's not just the lighting hacks (cranking up blues or whatever + orange filter), it's also adjusting the colors in software. "Well in reality it's much more intense then this picture, let me just crank up the saturation a bit, and move the white balance and ...".

If I ever recreated my reeflines lineage site, with coral pic uploads, one of the things I'd try and add is some form of photo manipulation smarts. Detect if it looks like lighting hacks were being used, and also if it looked like someone played with the photo's levels.

The only pictures I trust are @dandemeyere 's :).
 
This is a big ethical discussion on photography forums and not just with reefing. Does the photographer try to emulate what is seen right in front of them or do they treat it with artistic license and choose how to make it the most visually appealing.

I think most of the larger coral vendors aren’t trying to swindle people but do want their product to look good. Some of the smaller vendors or individuals have corals that only look good blasted with blues though.

I keep my tank on the blue side. As soon as I try and go whiter I lose the contrast between the intensity of the coral color against the dark rock.
 
Flagg37 said:
This is a big ethical discussion on photography forums and not just with reefing. Does the photographer try to emulate what is seen right in front of them or do they treat it with artistic license and choose how to make it the most visually appealing.

I think most of the larger coral vendors aren’t trying to swindle people but do want their product to look good. Some of the smaller vendors or individuals have corals that only look good blasted with blues though.

I keep my tank on the blue side. As soon as I try and go whiter I lose the contrast between the intensity of the coral color against the dark rock.
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I think when trying to sell coral online the photographer should emulate what is seen in front of them as is. If you are taking pictures for any other reason, I say go for whatever makes you happy.
 
Matthew Meyer said:
I think when trying to sell coral online the photographer should emulate what is seen in front of them as is. If you are taking pictures for any other reason, I say go for whatever makes you happy.
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Even then, that doesn't fix when people keep their lights at close to UV only vs. whatever you might keep. This is why more places should do this with actinic vs. 10k:

tidalgardens.com

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tidalgardens.com tidalgardens.com
 
I’m not defending those who grossly abuse photo editing, but often some editing is needed to make the pic look like what you see, since cameras generally don’t do as well capturing what we see with our strange lighting. I’ve noticed more recent iPhones do a lot better at this than they used to, and often I don’t have to edit the photo at all to make it look pretty realistic.

On a tangent, in our heath care systems we’ve started having people use photos of themselves either uploaded at home or taken during registration to put a face to the name/medical record for hopefully more personal care. Some women (not being sexist, it’s always women) will upload these highly edited glam photos that don’t look anything like them. Like you would not be able to pick them out of a lineup using the photo. It’s exactly the opposite of the intention of the photo, they’d be better off not having submitted it.
 
JVU said:
I’m not defending those who grossly abuse photo editing, but often some editing is needed to make the pic look like what you see, since cameras generally don’t do as well capturing what we see with our strange lighting. I’ve noticed more recent iPhones do a lot better at this than they used to, and often I don’t have to edit the photo at all to make it look pretty realistic.

On a tangent, in our heath care systems we’ve started having people use photos of themselves either uploaded at home or taken during registration to put a face to the name/medical record for hopefully more personal care. Some women (not being sexist, it’s always women) will upload these highly edited glam photos that don’t look anything like them. Like you would not be able to pick them out of a lineup using the photo. It’s exactly the opposite of the intention of the photo, they’d be better off not having submitted it.
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I work as a nurse in the hospital and have patients putting on makeup in the morning. It drives me nuts.
 
Screenshot_20230408_110736_Facebook.jpg
 
The problem is that photos are going to naturally distort what is seen, whether it's how bright some colors to how much detail really can be seen with the naked eye. Your eye does not work the same way as a camera sensor, they could take a picture that as a sizable shutter speed (yeah even with a phone camera) and it picks up a lot more light from colors that may not look as "popping" as you. Also with a camera you can zoom into a photo and get a lot more detail than you normally can see unless you are a very near sighted aka "Macro mode". Plus even with the same exact light fixtures there could be other differences in perception of color whether it's different settings on blue settings to how much yellowing there is to your water. So bottom line yeah, take any picture with a sizable grain of salt.

I mean you can tell by those photos that very little white compared to the amount of blue was used on the lights, but my biggest gripe is even in person stores and vendors that have the whites shut off completely when showing off their wares, I mean I can't be off base with that not many people keep their tank lit like that normally am I? What's the point of buying any brightly colored fish if you're never going to see those colors because you bathe everything in a deep blue?
 
I decided a long time ago the only real vote I (and everyone else) get on subjects like this, where something is for sale, is how I spend my dollars. What I say with my words doesn’t really matter. If I like something with good design and good support, I vote for it with my dollars. Including paying more than the cheapest option would be. If I dislike manipulative advertising and poorly designed junk, then I don’t vote for that with my dollars.

Other people can and do vote differently than I do, which is why you see this stuff. The market will give us what people vote for.
 
Because of all of this, there are only a few places i buy from online; places (through experience) don't exaggerate their pics of the corals.
 
Just bought an anenome from Aqua SD. They sent me a baby or something. Size of a half dollar when it opens up and doesmatch the picture. I'm done buying online.
 
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