You know that feeling when you spend weeks getting your aquascape just right – every plant trimmed perfectly, fish swimming in harmony, lighting dialed in – and then you take a photo and it looks like… well, like garbage? Yeah, I’ve been there more times than I care to admit. When my daughter was three, she pointed at one of my early tank photos and asked if it was a picture of soup. Ouch.
I mean, I’m a graphic designer by trade, so you’d think I’d have some clue about taking decent photos, right? Wrong. Turns out photographing through glass with water and moving subjects is a completely different beast than designing logos on my computer. Who knew? But after countless terrible shots and way too much time spent trying to figure out why my beautiful 20-gallon planted tank looked like a brown blur in pictures, I finally started getting results that didn’t make me want to hide my phone.
The whole photography thing started because I wanted to document our tanks for the kids. My daughter loves looking at old photos of “her” fish, and I thought it’d be cool to create this visual timeline of how our aquascapes evolved. Plus, let’s be honest, after spending that much money on plants and equipment, I wanted some decent photos to justify the expense to my spouse. “Look honey, see how gorgeous this looks? Totally worth the cost of that fancy CO2 system…”
But man, those first attempts were rough. Everything was either too dark, too bright, or so blurry you couldn’t tell if you were looking at fish or floating debris. I’d try to take a quick shot during the kids’ afternoon quiet time – because that’s literally the only moment of the day when no one’s banging on the glass or asking me seventeen questions – and I’d end up with photos that looked like I took them during an earthquake.
The breakthrough came when I finally stopped treating tank photography like regular photography. See, with most subjects, you can adjust your position, move the lighting around, tell your subject to sit still. With aquariums? You’re stuck shooting through glass, dealing with reflections, working with whatever lighting you’ve got set up for the plants, and hoping the fish cooperate for like two seconds. It’s basically photography on hard mode.
Lighting was my biggest nemesis initially. Our main tank sits in the living room where there’s this weird combination of natural light from the sliding door and artificial light from the ceiling fan, plus the LED strip on the tank itself. During different times of day, I’d get completely different results – sometimes the whole thing would be washed out, sometimes you couldn’t see anything at all. I started keeping track of when the lighting looked best, which sounds super nerdy but actually helped a ton. Turns out early morning, right after I turn on the tank lights but before the sun gets too bright through the slider, gives me the most consistent results.
The reflection problem took forever to solve. I’d take what I thought was a great shot, only to realize later that you could see the TV screen reflected in the glass, or my own face looking like some weird aquatic ghost. My daughter thought this was hilarious – “Mommy, you’re swimming with the fishies!” – but it wasn’t exactly the aesthetic I was going for. Now I turn off all the other lights in the room and position myself at different angles to minimize reflections. Sometimes I’ll even hold up a dark towel behind me to block reflections from other light sources. Probably looks ridiculous, but it works.
Camera settings used to completely intimidate me. All that stuff about ISO and aperture and shutter speed – I’d just stick it on auto and hope for the best. But auto mode doesn’t understand that you’re trying to photograph through water, so it makes weird decisions. I finally forced myself to learn manual settings, and honestly, it’s not as complicated as it seems once you understand the basics. Higher ISO for darker conditions, but not too high or everything gets grainy. Faster shutter speed to catch moving fish without blur. Wider aperture to let in more light, but not so wide that everything’s out of focus.
The fish movement thing is still challenging. My neon tetras are like tiny underwater rockets – they’ll be perfectly positioned for a gorgeous shot, and the second I raise my camera, they scatter. I’ve learned to be patient, which is saying something because patience isn’t exactly my strong suit when I’ve got limited time between toddler meltdowns. Sometimes I’ll just sit there with my camera ready, waiting for them to swim back into position. My kids think I’m playing some kind of very boring statue game.
Getting close-up shots of specific plants or fish was impossible at first. Everything would be out of focus or too dark to see detail. I discovered that most phone cameras have a macro mode buried somewhere in the settings – took me way too long to find it because I never read instruction manuals – and that made a huge difference for detail shots. Though you have to get really close to the glass, which sometimes spooks the fish. Sorry guys, just trying to get a nice photo of your beautiful fins here.
Editing was another learning curve. I’d take a photo that looked okay on my phone screen, but when I looked at it later on my computer, it was way too dark or the colors were all wrong. Started playing around with basic adjustments – brightness, contrast, saturation – using free apps on my phone. Nothing fancy, just trying to make the photos look more like what I actually see when I look at the tank. It’s tempting to crank up the saturation to make everything super vibrant, but then it starts looking fake and cartoon-like.
One thing that really improved my photos was thinking about composition differently. Instead of just trying to capture the entire tank, I started focusing on specific sections or elements. Maybe just the foreground with some interesting rock formations, or the way the light filters through the stem plants in the background. Sometimes a photo of just one corner of the tank tells a better story than trying to fit everything in the frame.
The rule of thirds thing from art school actually applies here too. Instead of putting the main focal point right in the center of the photo, positioning it off to one side usually looks more interesting. Like if there’s a particularly beautiful piece of driftwood or a colorful fish, placing it about one-third of the way from the edge of the frame creates better visual balance.
Timing matters more than I initially realized. Right after feeding time, the fish are more active and positioned throughout the tank instead of hiding. But they’re also moving around more, which makes it harder to get sharp photos. Early in the morning, everyone’s calmer but the lighting might not be ideal. I’ve found that about an hour after the tank lights come on in the morning works well – the fish are awake and visible, but not hyperactive, and the plant colors look vibrant under the LED lighting.
My phone camera has gotten way better over the years, which definitely helps. The newer phones handle low light situations much better than older models, and the image stabilization means I’m not getting as many blurry shots from my hands shaking. Though I still brace my arms against the tank stand when possible for extra stability.
The kids have gotten into the photography aspect too, which is cute but also chaotic. My four-year-old wants to take pictures of “her” fish in the bedroom tank, but she hasn’t quite mastered the concept of holding the phone steady. We get a lot of artistic but unintentional abstract shots. My two-year-old mostly just wants to press the button repeatedly, which results in about fifty photos of the same spot on the glass. But hey, they’re learning about technology and showing interest in documenting our aquatic family, so I call it a win.
Looking back at photos from our first tank setup versus recent ones, the improvement is pretty obvious. Those early shots look like I was photographing through muddy water with a potato, while the recent ones actually show the detail and beauty that I see when I look at the tanks in person. It just took time to figure out the specific challenges of aquarium photography and develop techniques that work with our equipment and setup.
The best part is having this visual record of how our tanks have evolved. I can show the kids photos of their fish when they were tiny babies, or how different the plant layouts looked over time. It’s become this unexpected family photo album, just with more fish and fewer people. And when relatives ask how the “fish hobby” is going, I have actual decent photos to share instead of apologizing for how terrible the pictures look. Small victories, you know?
Jordan’s home tanks started as a way to teach his kids about nature—and ended up teaching him patience. Between client work and bedtime chaos, he finds calm trimming plants and watching fish. Family life, design, and algae control all blend in his posts.
