Emperor of the Sea

The lionfish is one of the animals which always make me take a look at a picture. It is a wonderful subject for any photographer because it's relatively easy to get an attractive cadre out of it - nature has simply done most of the work. But there are certain hidden difficulties as well.

One of the commonest issues is composition. The many growths of the fish complicate things and most photographers simply try to compass the entire fish within the frames of the photo. Here, the decision "cut" part of the body out of the photo resulted in a good composition, a more intimate and influential portrait. It only seems a little "tight" in the bottom of the cadre because the main focus of attention is always in the face of the animal. In this sense a little more space in bottom would look better.
Another issue with lionfishes is focus. With so many beautiful fins, where do I focus? The answer is the golden rule of fish photography: always focus the eye. The eye looks a little blurry to me on this photograph and this irritates a bit. Nevertheless, the focus is satisfactory as it made the stripes of the fish very clear. Another good thing is the perfect sharpness in the focal area. There is no motion blur, nor any other distortion caused by movement or refraction.
Yet the best thing about this photograph is the colors. In them one can see the truly artistic touch of the author. Since the fish is mainly black and white in colors, she combined it with a colorful background to both strenghten the impression from the animal through color contrast and to make the whole cadre more pleasant to look at. I like the rainbow-ish overall gradient very much. It is vivid, but not overly saturated, it really gives life to the piece. Also, I like how the fins' hues delicately blend into background to the left and upper right. It creates harmony between the elements of the cadre.

Shortly said, this is an excellent and very attractive work. The author took a masterpiece of nature and managed to recreate it into its best light, creating a masterpiece of her own.