How a Betta Fish Taught Me to See Light Differently
It began with a flash, an aquarium, and a betta fish that refused to sit still. What started as a pandemic hobby ended up on the cover of an award-winning book.
My father-in-law has always loved photography, and he shoots with a Nikon D800E. Years before the pandemic, he took a photo of my daughter, and when I saw the result, something clicked.
It wasn't just a nice photo. It was the depth of field. The way the background melted away and left her completely in focus, completely alive in the frame. I had been taking photos on my phone for years and thought I understood what a "good photo" looked like. That one photo changed my mind. Phones flatten everything into one plane, while a real lens lets the subject breathe. I admired it for a long time before I did anything about it.
Then 2020 happened. Stuck at home like everyone else, with a lot of free time and that memory still sitting in the back of my mind, I finally bought my own camera. There was no real plan behind it, just curiosity.
That curiosity led me to macro lenses, which led me to a very 2020 specific obsession: betta fish. Every household plant person had suddenly become a fish person, and I was no exception. Except instead of just keeping them, I wanted to photograph them.
There was no tutorial for this. I didn't know any betta photographers, so I just started experimenting on my own. Eventually I landed on a method that worked: shooting straight down through the acrylic top of the tank, with a flash positioned above. It was a simple setup with no assistant, just trial and error in my own living room, tank water splashing everywhere, and a fish that had zero interest in cooperating.
Getting the shot was only half the job. Aquarium water is never as clean as you want it to be, with dust, tiny bubbles, and debris drifting around all the time. So every usable frame went through hours in Photoshop, carefully cleaning the background until the fish looked like it was floating in pure light. That part wasn't glamorous. It was just repetition, one speck at a time, until the image finally looked the way I had imagined it before I even pressed the shutter.
I didn't set out to build a portfolio. I just wanted to get better at something new during a strange, static year.
But one of those betta fish photographs ended up catching the eye of PT Nirmana Exa Tricipta (NEXT) and PT Bintang Sempurna, and became part of the concept behind Betta Fish, a printed book built entirely around the philosophy of the fighting fish: resilience, beauty, and persistence. The project went on to win Gold Winner at HP Inkspiration Awards 2022 and Silver Winner at Asian Print Awards 2022.
Looking back, none of that was the plan. I wasn't chasing an award. I was just a guy with a new camera, learning how light works, one impatient fish at a time.
That's usually how it goes, I think. You don't stumble into something meaningful by aiming for the outcome. You stumble into it by being curious enough to keep pointing a camera at something, long after it stops being convenient.
Sources:
Betta Fish Antarkan PT Bintang Sempurna Raih Gold Winner 2022 - Bintang Sempurna
4 Trofi untuk PT Bintang Sempurna, HP Inkspiration Awards 2022 - Onlineprint.co.id