As a part of a project for Grant County Public Utility District, we were asked to photograph salmon coming back to the hatchery to spawn, as is their natural instinct. There is an outlet channel from the hatchery that is at least a mile long, located right downstream from Priest Rapids Dam. Not being underwater photographers nor being set up with underwater cameras and lighting, let alone scuba or drysuit equipment, we chose a simpler approach. What they wanted was images of these mature fish making their way upstream. They are fairly contained in the channel. What I did was to bring a small aquarium and some flash lighting units. I built a stand in the water with some cement blocks at a turn in the stream, placed the aquarium about 6" deep into the 3 foot-deep water on top of the stack of blocks, put some lead weights in the aquarium to keep it from floating off, and placed a camera inside it, up against the glass. I was in chest waders, the assistant in hip boots. The camera and light needed to stay dry. It was much too dark to work with sunlight or even skylight, being late afternoon. We placed two lights on boom stands over the water to create a "sweet spot" of strobe light in the water where I hoped the fish would swim through and where the flash units were concentrated. The water was more murky than I expected. Zone focusing, I shot as I saw clusters of fish approaching and entering our prepared area. The whole thing worked pretty well though I was in the water for close to three hours. The images were quite flat coming out of the camera so we gave them more contrast and did what we could to make them look like what we saw. Our client was happy with the images we delivered. Here are "before and after" (post-processing) samples:
