When I posted the call for the Zodiac series one of the models who answered for Pisces was Kristara. That reminded me that I had already shot her in an image that pretty much fitted the brief. The only thing that I needed to add to it was a couple of fishes to make the usual Pisces symbol.

Fortunately we have a fishpond right outside the house and so I thought it would be easier just to photograph the fish as they came up to the surface. I needed to use a polarising filter on the camera to cut down on some of the water clear but I thought that I had managed to get a usable image despite the fact that the pond was quite dark

I discovered how much of an issue the dark pond would be when I tried to incorporate the fish into the image. There was no way of separating them from the background easily without the image looking fake.

So I decided that I needed to get them on a lighter background. This meant catching the fish and putting into a plastic container.

The only problem with the approach was that the net would pick up a lot of materials floating in the water at the same time.

I had wanted to use two fish but in the end used the same image twice to create the pattern. In Photoshop I placed the fish in an area where there was nothing else, but also copied the background around this area. This was then placed in a layer above the fish and the opacity decreased to let them come through. The benefit of doing this was that the light reflecting on the water was consistent.

I was really pleased with how the image came out.