What I Did on My Vacation #6

Today, I plan to finish-up photos of the Big Four—sea lions, iguanas, birds and crabs—with Crabs.

Before we went on vacation, I was sitting down with my grandchildren, viewing photographs of the Galapagos Islands and Machu Picchu.  As I always do, I asked them what photo they would like me to take for them.  Cole wanted a shark eating a sea lion (not likely), and of course, Cam added a “me, too.”  Chloe wanted a photo of “bright-colored crab”, to which, Cam added another “me, too.”

The traditional shot of crabs is against the black volcanic rock.  And, why should it be the classic?  Brightly colored red, yellow and blue crabs set off beautifully against the black rock.  I is almost like setting-up a black backdrop to take a portrait of a beautiful light skinned, blond woman.  The black backdrop just makes the colors and the light features more dominate.  The only trick to this type of photo is to realize that your in-camera meter will want to turn the black rock into 18% grey, so you must set your EV compensation to at least -2 EV.  You can try to do a post-processing adjustment, but I have found that trying to save washed-out, over exposed colors is almost impossible. 

After getting my traditional shot in the bag, I started looking for shots that you normally do not see.  I found crab in my second shot about 400 feet from the water, laying in an ice plant.  Here, you have color on color, which, to me, just seems to help illustrate just how colorful the crabs are.

My final crab photo was a challenge to get.  Why?   First, because the crabs in water are very fast and they tend to move away from you as soon as you get close; and, second, because overall scene is very bright with a lot of specular highlights which again fools your in-camera meeting.  So, how did I solve these problems?  As I wrote earlier, I used a polarizing filter to eliminate many of the specular highlights.  In addition, I generally waited until a cloud was in front of the sun and then I would start firing away.  In the final photo, I like how the three primary colors—red, yellow and blue—stick out and how the rock covered-in green algae seems to point directly out the subject.

Enjoy.