I’m pretty proud of this one.

Most “real” photographers talk about how they pre-visualize the shot and what they do to make it happen. Because I work with animals that I haven’t trained and usually have no control over what they do or their environment, pre-visualization seldom works for me. However, when you know a species pretty well, you can guess what they’re going to do. This helps to get you positioned to get a good shot. Many of mine are like that.

However, in a very few number of cases, you can also control lighting and position. If you’re not shooting around bars or trees, like in an aquarium, you have more flexibility. (You actually lost angle capability due to refraction, but there’s no need to get into that right now.)

So when I saw the translucency of the sea weed, and I knew the habit of sea horses to slowly drift and then anchor with their tails, it was just a matter of determining where I wanted the light to be and then I waited.

This is one of the very few shots that turned out almost exactly as I intended.