urville

I was talking about this with some people, and then I got Amano's Aquarium plant Paradise, which by the way is completely awesome, I noticed both in the book and some pictures i got off of ADA Euro that he has immense shaded areas and yet the plants seem to be fine.
see just one of many example pics below

so is it the camera? or the lighting just for the photo? i think this is what matpat was saying in a PM <hope i'm not misquoting>
is the liught actually far brighter?
so far i have experienced no death from shade, but certainly slow growth. but everything gets light just some less than others. i was just wondering because i'm awfully fond of the very very heavily planted tanks. many of which i see on the amano sites are inspiration.

see what i mean in the sections on the right?

Phil Edwards

I think the shade in his photos is more a function of the lighting used for photography and is not representative of the day to day lighting.

James..........

Photography, both conventional and digital, can only record a limited dynamic range. Anything outside of this limited range is rendered either as black or white. For average scenes, this isn't too much of a problem. The dynamic range of most modern emulsions (conventional photography) is sufficiently broad to produce acceptable results in non-critical applications.

Many years ago, the photographic master Ansel Adams developed the Zone System, initially for black and white but later extended to color photography. The main tenant of the Zone System is to expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights. The whole system took several volumes (books) to describe! Best suited for either studio shooting or relatively static outdoor landscape work with large format cameras, the Zone System can produce images with a luminousity and depth that can draw the viewer into the image and in the right hands, can make an image appear almost 3D. But it is incredibly difficult to master (I gave up after 5 years and many boxes of 4X5 sheet film).

In a photo of an aquarium, especially one of Amano's aquascapes, the images are shot in a studio situation with high end large format cameras, lenses and multiple source electronic flashes. Amano is a master of photography as well as aquascaping but even he can't cover the entire tonal range of some of his aquascapes in all cases. What appears to your eye to be "deep shade" is most likely still receiving enough light to grow plants, it is just outside the dynamic range of the photographic process. There are techniques which employ multiple images of the same scene, optimized for the extreme highlights and shadows and using advanced darkroom work which can come closer to visual reality but then Amano's books would cost hundreds of dollars each to cover the production costs. Aquariums are also not "static" images, water moves, and so do plants and fish, making it almost impossible to take 2 images which match in every detail. Have you any idea of how much it would cost to have multiple high end large format cameras set up and synchronized to capture the identical scene from the same viewpoint?

I think that Amano did a masterful job in photographing his aquascaapes and his publisher did an excellent job in reproducing them in print at a reasonable cost.

James Purchase
Toronto

urville

I see what your saying.

heres the thing though. look at that picture those plants are neck to neck thick. if i grrew my tank that way then i could guarantee shade. so the question still stand as to how he avoids die off on the lower nodes. i just dont get it.

maybe he prunes them down to nothing below the light point? he uses over 15 wpg? it sounds ridiculous but then that growth is literally a jungle you'd have to cut through to get anywhere.

Phil Edwards

Urville,

The normal day-to-day lighting on many of Amano's tanks cover the whole area of the aquarium. With that coverage, and the amount of light used, just about every exposed surface in the aquarium (ie stems and leaves) gets light. For purposes of photography he uses intense spot lighting which not only allows for more high resolution close ups, but it also creates areas of shade that may not exist in the day-to-day existence of the aquarium.

His trimming method helps to cause the plants to fill in as well. It's easier on the mind to not attempt duplicating one of his photos in the aquarium. Those pictures are about as artificial as one can get without digital additions/removals when it comes representing the actual aquarium.

urville

Man that really must be a ton of light. i'm gonn have to look around see if I canf ind out how much. And I never see algae...