How can I take better pictures of the fish I catch?
After reeling a fish in, sometimes I want to take a picture before I let it go. So I unhook the fish and hold it in one hand while I take the picture with my other.
I am usually in a hurry to get the fish back into the water quickly and its always kind of awkward to hold a slimy fish in one hand and a camera in the other.
Here is a photo that I took:
Are there techniques or tips for better photos under these types of conditions?
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...it's always kind of awkward to hold a slimy fish in one hand and a camera in the other.
If you put the camera on a tripod pointing down, you free up a hand. This would also potentially let you set up a white background with a ruler to show how large the fish is.
Taking this to extremes, if you have sufficiently high-end equipment you could tether the camera to a tablet (probably powered by a large battery pack, because it will need to be always on and run the screen fairly bright) and operate it by nose on touchscreen. For a lower tech approach, it should be possible to find a remote trigger which can be fired with a foot pedal.
One thing you can do is blur the background further. This is achieved by having a lower f-stop (you can think of it as aperture). If you are using a cellphone, this is the same thing as portrait mode on iPhone.
You could also try to hang the fish with fishing line, so your hands don't show up in the photo, and then using the bandaid tool in photoshop, simply remove the string from the photo. This will give a cool floating fish kinda effect.
And finally, framing always matters. In your photo, the background is mostly water, but at the right edge, there is a little green grass. So try to get an even background, so it looks more realistic and cool.
Lastly, try to make the fish's eyes look towards the camera. Then you can adjust the DOF(Depth of Field) to make the scales look sharp, and the eyes look blurry. I would take a photo, but I'm not allowed to touch fish, so sorry :)
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