At arm’s length

[Mike]

So If I don my studded leather cod piece when posing with my fish, I'd get more likes?

Just hold that thought for a while

Put on a bit of blusher and some lippy and it will go astronomical (for a certain sector of the angling public)

 

[Mr Fish]

In today's world it is the style of the photo that "sells the product" over the actual subject. It has slowly worked its way into most facets of life over the past twenty years.

A few years ago, I was invited to an Amazon VTD (sounds like a sexual disease) but it's actually a programme where Amazon invites you to London to spend a day at the HQ where they explain how their sales algorithm works. They obviously have a lot of data to crunch, worldwide, and in their “sales wheel” style and substance of a photo was the third most important sales factor after price and user reviews.

I know, for example, if there is a stunning photo of a fish (regardless of size) at a certain angle, with a certain light it will explode on social media, where a standard grip and grin, won't. I know that a shore caught common skate, shot at a distance, will get half the likes of a shot of a standard tope with its teeth gnashing at the camera lens. This is because those shots make people stop when they're scrolling and hit like or follow or whatever it is on the platform the images are on. A standard grip and grin, generally, doesn't have that effect as when in scrolling mode, your brain doesn't compute anything that looks the same as everything else that has gone before it.

It's why a YouTube video with a thumbnail of a bikini clad maiden holding a fish will piss all over a 30lb cod held up by a bearded 50-year-old bloke. To prove that point, the YouTube channel Fishing with Luiza has 530k subscribers while South Florida Fishing has 154k, even though his channel has better actual fishing information within it - and they're operating in the same geographical area.

Carp fishing has moved to this where the actual fish is not that influential in the photo, it's the composition and the lighting and how much "bokeh" you can get in the background - that's how blurred the background is if you don't know.

Coarse match fishing has been immune to a degree, as there is only one way you can take a photo of a keepnet full of fish (and even then, some people screw it up).

I think the rise in using mobile phones and self takes has probably done more to reduce the quality of photos than anything. Kind of ironic as most phones are very capable photographic tools. Because the angle is almost always lower with a self takes (as most people are using their phone and small tripods or not even using a tripod at all) it creates all sorts of weird and wonderful angles. Also, because of the way self takes work, you're at the mercy of a countdown to get the shot, and it may well snap before you get the fish to the angle you want. The fact is, most people don't really know how to use all the features in their camera app or that third-party apps are available, at a sensible cost, to make the job a lot easier than they're making it. For example, there is an app for the iPhone that will take a self take if you whistle, the sound triggers the camera to fire. So you can get into the best position and only fire when you got the shot you want.

There are also apps that will mimic the functionality of an intervalometer. For example, if I do a self take, not that often, but I hook up an intervalometer to my Fuji X-T4, this will fire a shot off at whatever intervals you set, (one every two seconds). It then allows you to position the fish to how you want it, and then take as many shots and as many angles as you want until you tell the camera to stop firing. Most people wouldn't know how to or want to go to that effort to set up those types of shots.

There is also the fact that the social platforms force you into certain aspect ratios that work better on phones that almost remove the photographers' creativity unless you want the shot to look odd. As an example, if you're an Instagram user, you're forced to crop your images to 1:1 or 4:5 so you have to play around to fit within that. In my work, we now use AI to build a background either top and bottom or left and right to fill in to make the image square if we have to. The fish and angler doesn't need to be manipulated at all or with minimal influence to get it to fit size that the social platforms demand, such is its importance to the algorithm. We do try to get people to "shoot wide" so we can just crop it 1:1 but in the heat of the moment, very few remember to.

Pro photographers are actually the worse for that as they are still in print mode where the whole frame has to be filled or the shot gets binned. They have a mental block about taking a "bad photo" and allowing post-production to fix it.

I hate the fact that everything we do now is dictated to by an algorithm, but, unless you jump in line and follow it, you're pissing in the wind to get any traction. Sadly, though, if you don't follow it, others will, and then your client gets left behind, which leads to them sacking the marketing guy and them having to live off soup for the rest of their days.

Of course, sites like this, don't have any of those restraints, so you can crack away and post whatever size, ratio image you want of your captures - which is how it should be. On a forum there is no algorithm that works off your dopamine to reward you for taking a photo you probably didn't want to take in the first place.

I don’t disagree Mike and do take your point a ‘popping’ picture sells a product - Sea Angler did it for years and I assume still does.
The social media aspect is an added new wrinkle on all that, but imo it’s basically the same thing.

However… I see a difference between pros or semi pros (depending on how you’d class YouTubers for example), using in your face pics of fish to attract custom and Jonny on the beach giving himself a rupture by holding an 8oz bream at extreme arms length.

The bass pic above is a good example of a good fish picture composed well with the fish prominent in the shot. It’s a little exaggerated but it’s also showing off a very good fish so I have no issue with that.
But Jonny Long Arms could have over extended a 4/5lb bass and made it look a near double, which is where I have a problem with it all.

The hound pic I posted I know doesn’t show the fish off well but despite having a tripod and remote shutter I was on my own and the pic was intended as proof for a club comp rather than a photographic exercise.
You also didn’t see the 10 deleted shots where the hound kept slapping me on the back of the head with its tail
To try and minimise time out of the water I went with what I could get quickly rather than spend longer searching for the perfect shot.

 

[squidword]

I don’t disagree Mike and do take your point a ‘popping’ picture sells a product - Sea Angler did it for years and I assume still does.
The social media aspect is an added new wrinkle on all that, but imo it’s basically the same thing.

However… I see a difference between pros or semi pros (depending on how you’d class YouTubers for example), using in your face pics of fish to attract custom and Jonny on the beach giving himself a rupture by holding an 8oz bream at extreme arms length.

The bass pic above is a good example of a good fish picture composed well with the fish prominent in the shot. It’s a little exaggerated but it’s also showing off a very good fish so I have no issue with that.
But Jonny Long Arms could have over extended a 4/5lb bass and made it look a near double, which is where I have a problem with it all.

The hound pic I posted I know doesn’t show the fish off well but despite having a tripod and remote shutter I was on my own and the pic was intended as proof for a club comp rather than a photographic exercise.
You also didn’t see the 10 deleted shots where the hound kept slapping me on the back of the head with its tail
To try and minimise time out of the water I went with what I could get quickly rather than spend longer searching for the perfect shot.

You should of asked me, I was fishing next to you

 

[Mr Fish]

You should of asked me, I was fishing next to you

You were some way up the bank!

 

[SirGunner]

 

[stan m]

You don't need to do it for a job

I never did and got by just fine

 

[Still whittling]

Am I the only one who gets a bit peeved at seeing very very modest fish held so close to the camera with extended arms that they look huge?

Totally get showing the fish off properly and some pictures of bigger fish don’t do them justice if the picture is poorly composed, but trying to make much more of small fish than they are just seems deceitful and self deluding to me?

For example, this hound was just under 14lb and trust me it had the weight and the girth to match, but the picture doesn’t really do it any favours.
Since I was on my own and trying to get a snap as quickly as possible, fish welfare trumped photography.

View attachment 69949

Then you have this which I saw on Facebook earlier. I mean really?! Why?
That bream isn’t much more than palm sized.

View attachment 69950

Probably similar size to this one I caught there on Thursday.

View attachment 69951

It seems to be a modern phenomenon and especially on Facebook.
I was always taught to show the fish off properly but not over exaggerate it into a ‘Sea Angler photo’ as we used to call them.

And tbh trying to appear as a better angler than you are by massively exaggerating fish sizes just seems a bit pathetic to me.
The guy above also had a couple of codling that I’d have guessed around 2lb, but they were held out to look like 6lbers

I’d add that I don’t see a great deal of it on here, but Facebook is rife with it.

Only a matter of time Fishy

 

[Still whittling]

Bit like stuffing a marrow down your pants on a night out,the truth will out in the end

 

[Goatfish]

Bit like stuffing a marrow down your pants on a night out,the truth will out in the end

I tried it and she said “Good gourd, what’s that?”

 

[Dutchman]

Mates sons web site shows fish and sizes, no matter if extended arms, you know the weight and size is what he says.

 

[Trampster]

Never an issue I've given thought to. I wouldn't post a photo of a fish anywhere other than on TSF.
Can't be doing with lugging a camera tripod about in addition to my other gear, so anything I have caught just gets a quick photo on the deck. Don't want my mug in the photos anyway - it would frighten off the viewers!

 

[Angrybear]

Never an issue I've given thought to. I wouldn't post a photo of a fish anywhere other than on TSF.
Can't be doing with lugging a camera tripod about in addition to my other gear, so anything I have caught just gets a quick photo on the deck. Don't want my mug in the photos anyway - it would frighten off the viewers!

Completely agree, I hate having my photo taken, but sometimes the skipper insists.