I spent the afternoon fixing up some photos to print so we can frame them and decorate one of our walls with photos from our trip. While I was doing so, I decided to attempt something a little more aggressive.

During one of our last few dives, I decided to work in close to one of the Common Lionfish (Pterois volitans). In Cozumel, seeing one of these guys is a very bad thing. They are incredibly invasive and the reef fish in the Caribbean simply aren't ready to compete with them. However, in Indonesia, they are native and thus are in balance.

As I was working with the lionfish, I managed a couple good shots, but afterwards realized that two of the shots had elements that worked individually but I had not managed a single shot with all of the elements combined.

As you can see, the first shot does a great job of capturing that really cool modified "eye-brow" fin but cuts off too much of the face, whereas the second is a good close-up of the fish's face, but is missing the "eye-brow". So I got the idea to combine the two shots to get one single photo with everything. I also decided to stick with the extra long/narrow vertical format it produced.

Unfortunately, the two exposures were slightly different, so there was a lot of adjustments needed to get the colors to match. This required adjusting the colors and brightness and contrast several times - oddly to match the antenna took one batch of changes, while to match the rest of the face took another different batch.

Additionally, the scale of the two shots were also different, which luckily by overlapping some elements, I was able to match things up in that respect. The easiest technique I found for achieving this was to turn down the opacity of one layer and resize and move that layer until things matched up.

In the end, there is still one section that I am not exactly thrilled with how to came out. I'm not going to point out what it is, because I am wondering if I notice it because I sat working on it all afternoon. If you think you know which area still could use some work, drop a comment and let me know.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/170th and 1/130th sec respectively at f/8. Image Stabilization on. ISO 1600 and 1000 respectively (Auto). Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite DS161 Strobe in TTL Mode.

This is by far the most complex amount of photoshopping I've attempted. Usually I prefer to only make minor subtle modifications, but this little project was fun - I just don't think I'll be doing anything like this too often.

- Bill