Aquarium Photography with Marc Levenson

My local aquarium club, the Marine Aquarium and Reef Society of Houston, invited Marc Levenson down to teach us all a little something about aquarium photography. For those of you who don’t know Marc, you have to visit his site Melev’s Reef. He’s a great photographer, a wiz with acrylic work, and is so involved an entrenched in this great hobby. Marc has been an editor of Reefkeeping Magazine, as currently runs a reef-related podcast called Reefcast.

Hammer Coral Macro Shot

During the photography discussion, Marc went step-by-step with us, explaining cameras, lenses, and various techniques to capture that special photograph. I thought I had a fairly decent grasp on aquarium photography since I’ve researched quite a bit and most of the picture I take actually turn out pretty good. But using some of his recommended tips and tricks, I was able to get even better shots from my stock lens on my Canon XSi, and a few awesome shots on a handful of borrowed lenses. I have James Wiseman of Reefpix.org to thank for letting me borrow a few of his lenses, especially the awesome macro lenses.

For a great guide on aquarium photography, you’ll have to visits Marc’s “Fotos” page over on Melev’s Reef. His webpage covers pretty much everything discussed in the meeting, perhaps with a little less detail and obviously less hands on, but it’s still a good guide for aquarium photography.

After the meeting was over, Eric Borneman, Brian Plankis, and a small group of reef aquarium enthusiasts (myself included) sat around and discussed a few issues plaguing the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. The hot topic of course was the growing presence of lionfish that made their way into local waters and exploded in numbers. But that’s a topic for another time (sorry for the teaser).