Fish-eye Portrait
Another shot of spawned out salmon at Goldstream River. The picture above is the first time I have taken a self-portrait with a fish-eye. Somehow it seems proper for a photographer to be reflected in a fish’s eye when using a 24mm lens (perhaps not quite a fish-eye lens, but pretty close). The image below is a crop from the one at the bottom, just to emphasize my fishy portrait. I wonder if some remote-sensing wizard could take this image and render a recognisable photograph of me from it, like they must from satellite photographs.
This salmon was well removed from the river. How it got there I can only speculate. There has been a lot of research in the past decade or two about the relationship between salmon and forest health and the role that bears play. And that role is to deposit salmon, and bits of salmon, in a broad zone along river banks which serve to fertilize the forest soils. This leaves a distinctive nitrogen trace in the trees, which can be studied through time by analyzing individual tree rings. It is all fascinating to me, and to others. Thus, I think in a park, with lots of naturalist volunteers and only the rare bear, that this salmon in the woods is more likely placed there by a person acting as a proxy bear to help serve that same function. But, there are some bears, and of course dogs (even though they are not supposed to be in the park), and bald eagles which can lift pretty big fish, and cougars and maybe wolves too.
The size of this fish is hard to depict. This is partly because it is sitting on broadleaf or bigleaf maple leaves, which are very much larger than you might expect. For instance, see this Eye on Environment post for a photo of leaves with human feet in them as a scale. I should have put my foot in the picture, or something. Anyway, this fish is probably between 5 and 10 lbs in weight, maybe a bit more and certainly not trout-sized like it looks here (though I have caught a 20lb trout in a northern lake once, so even that is not the best example).
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My views from the United States yesterday were about 1/4 or less than the usual number (I had more from Singapore than the USA). I think there must have been something interesting on American TV all day, or something 😉
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Canon 5Dii, Nikkor-N 24mm/f2.8 (pre-ai) lens , ISO1250, aperture not recorded, 3 brackets each, +/- 1.0 EV.
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burnt embers 
Haha! I can see why this reminded you of me!
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🙂
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I thought this was going to be a technical post about a lens. Turns out it’s much more interesting than that! I love how you take out-of-the-norm subjects like this and go in-depth with them, Ehpem. You have a totally unique blog here that never fails to entertain! 🙂
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Well, a fish-eye lens would be interesting to me 🙂 And thanks Toad, I am taking it as I find it. We live in a very diverse area, with loads of good subjects, so I am lucky.
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Around here the fish that capsize are usually found adrift where the scavenger birds pick them pretty clean. I’ve seen 20 lb. salmon washed ashore and are nothing but bones after two days. It makes me sad to see it in a way but it is the circle of life.
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I forgot you had salmon around there – I think they are pinks, introduced from the west coast. They really took over in the great lakes area very quickly after introduction. Which goes to show, like in New Zealand, and freshly deglaciated areas of Alaska, and right after Mt. St. Helen’s and also the 1964 mega-earthquake ruined a bunch of spawning streams, that salmon are in fact remarkably resilient and adaptable. They sure need to be these days.
The circle of life is far more complex than formerly understood and the effects of salmon runs on the coastal rainforest ecosystems seem to be quite profound.
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Love the tones in these. That close-up makes your dead fish look rather fierce!
Somehow it’s fitting that everything is drenched in rain, perfect for the subject and strangely beautiful.
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I think that small fish must feel the same way about living salmon, just before those hooked teeth pull them in.
The rain really helped a lot with the colours and the quality of light.
I did mention a week or two ago that I seemed to be drifting towards a desaturated look. Since then I have been quite the opposite. Must have a rebellious core somewhere that I am not aware of usually.
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Leaf platter 1 makes me think of a restaurant serving as you must have titling the photograph the way you did. The photography of decay is always interesting even though it does not necessarily make good wall decoration. Very nice coloring, though, especially in #3 and its cropped version.
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Thanks Joseph – not great for the wall, I agree. These photos are a bit of a compromise since taking pictures of the living fish is almost a non-starter (without an underwater camera anyway), and they show even less well in long exposures where they become blurred. So, dead and stranded fish became the focal points of my images instead. I quite liked this one that did remind me of fancy serving in a slightly funky restaurant.
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Yes I agree on the funky restaurant bit, but, again, the coloring and the detail in these photographs (and the light) are exquisite.
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