October 2008 Meeting

Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

Kris Weinhold hosted our October meeting at his home in Columbia, MD. The topic for was Photographing your Planted Aquarium. In addition, we announced the winners of our 2008 2.5G Aquascaping Contest and held nominations for the 2009 board of directors.

About thirty members showed up for the meeting. Kris prepared a short slide show detailing how to photograph a planted aquarium. This included what equipment was necessary, what tank preparation was needed, and a small amount on post-processing. In short, most cameras are capable of taking a decent picture of your tank. Make sure to turn off your flash, and use a tripod for steadiness. Put as much light on top of the tank as possible, turn off all room lights, filters, and powerheads. Clean the glass and do a water change the day prior to shooting. Center the camera in front of your tank, angled slightly downwards to get a picture representative of how you normally look at your tank. Make sure not to over expose the plants in the top of the tank, and ensure that all plants, front to back, are in focus. If you achieve all of these things, you’ll likely end up with a presentable representation of your aquascape to share with friends online, or to submit to a contest.

In addition to the presentation, we also accepted nominations for the 2009 board of directors. Most of the board is rerunning for their position, except for Aaron Talbot, who will likely be suceeded by Jen Williams as recording secretary. We also announced the winners of the 2008 2.5G aquascaping contest, and held our regular mini auction.