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Hey Everyone, and thanks @Lena for an giving us such an inspiring challenge this month.
I loved all the photos posted on this thread, and very interesting to read about different techniques and approaches to this topic. I haven’t had much experience with backlighting so far (except for the few times when the expert guides in Anilao or Lembeh set the scene up for me, which – very honestly – I can’t take much credit for 😅). So on my last Lembeh trip (with a fellow TUC member @Ariane 🙌), I decided to give it a try without the guide’s help.
No backlit seahorses for me, and believe me, not for the lack of trying. This Occelated Tozeuma Shrimp (Broken-back Shrimp, Tozeuma lanceolatum), however, was a very patient subject, and seated on a piece of sponge surrounded by black sand, which made it easy to extend my strobes’ arms far forward (behind the subject), and angle the strobes inwards. After a lot of trial and error, I hope I achieved the effect I was aiming for: show the translucent eggs the shrimp was carrying, and give a bit of a 3D effect to both the shrimp and the sponge. I tried it with open and closed aperture – I think I prefer the classical black background myself.
For comparison, I post also front-lit photos of the same subject.
- Photo 1 (backlit): f/3.5, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
- Photo 2: f/4.0, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
- Photo 3 (backlit): f/16, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
- Photo 4: f14, 1/125 sec, ISO 100
Shot with Sony A7R III in Nauticam housing, with the 90mm lens and Sea&Sea YS-D3 strobes.
Lembeh, Indonesia, April 2026
