Collecting the salmon eggs (Permitted by the State)

Typically, I’m a long lens cinematographer and I spend my time outdoors with much bigger wildlife.. However, the opportunity came up to film salmon eggs hatching and trial different Laowa lenses.

I would call myself slightly salmon obsessed- my family has worked in Bristol Bay for three generations, I grew up going to ‘fish camps’, my family runs a fishing and adventure lodge in Cordova, Alaska and I have salmon tattoos around my arm. My mom and dad have hatched salmon eggs in their classrooms for over two decades (my mom still does in her elementary library!) with great success through the ‘Salmon in the Classroom’ program put on by the State. My mom focuses on her students learning the salmon life cycle (up close and personal, with a tank in her class), then the anatomy with the dissection of an adult male and female salmon and then lessons with her partner teacher about Billy Frank Jr. and the importance of salmon in indigenous culture.

We had the permit to produce educational content for my mom’s classroom with the eggs. Laowa offered us the opportunity to trial some additional lenses with the ones we already had and it seemed like great opportunity (how cool to give the students such a different and exciting view of the salmon they know and love!). We would film the salmon at several stages: eyed egg, alevin and fry.

Jason Ching at the research station in Alaska

My close friend, Jason Ching, is an exceptional cinematographer, his primary focus being salmon, and works in salmon research with the University of Washington’s Salmon Program (Make sure you check out this article about his work with salmon). Jason is known for his beautiful images and videos of the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run. His imagery was a huge part of the advocacy for protections against the Pebble Mine over the last two decades. Two years ago, I assisted Jason in building a specialized filming tank to hatch salmon eggs for the series USA National Parks: Olympic National Park on National Geographic and Disney+. I had to head off for a penguin shoot, but over the year he filmed the stages of salmon (under permits from the State), from the eyed egg stage to the spawning streams.

Kelsey Kroon in Alaska filming her final film ‘Silver Rush’

We brought Kelsey Kroon on board as well. She is a recent graduate of University of West England ‘Wildlife Filmmaking’ Masters and her final film focused on a story back home in Alaska, on the salmon’s journey on the Kenai River. This was filmed over the summer of 2024 and took a look at the threats and challenges to salmon during their arduous journey back home.

We felt she would be a good fit as she already has a strong vested interest in salmon and had done some macro work during the filming of her own and her course mates’ films.

(You can buy her salmon lifecycle sticker here!)

Luckily we have a lot of salmon knowledge within one room (that one room being my dining room, that quickly filled up as the salmon set). The eggs need to be cared for in a very certain way- think pH, temperature, light exposure, etc. We also need to maintain water movement and flow on the eggs to keep them properly oxygenated. We were able to have an estimated date of hatching based upon the water temperatures the eggs were held at and the ‘spawn’ date.

Once the eggs started hatching, we knew we would have limited days before they were all alevin. We also wanted to ensure a high survival rate of the eggs for later fry release, so we needed to make sure all conditions were ideal and the eggs had limited time in any bright lights. At the end of hatching, our overall egg survival rate to alevin was approximately 98.9% (this is what happens when you have a bunch of salmon nerds in one place I guess!).

We had a variety of equipment- the RED Epic-W, Sony FX3, Sony A7SIII and Sony A1. Laowa sent us the Laowa Aurogon FF 10-50x NA0.5 Supermicro APO' and the Laowa 24mm T14 2X PeriProbe. Jason already had the Laowa Venus Optics LAOWA 24 mm t 14-40 (the original straight, second generation 90 degree and the straight), the 3rd generation 35 degree and 25mm F2.8 2.5-5X Lens. Kelsey had the Laowa 100 mm Ultra Macro. The Laowa probe lenses allowed us to work underwater with the eggs, using different support systems to stabilize or track and move with the cameras. Jason has built several set ups over the years to do this work and has bins of tools that we utilized every step of the way.

Jason owns quite a few different Laowa lenses and utilized those throughout the egg and hatching portion of the shoot. As he’d shot salmon eggs hatching before during the previous National Geographic shoot, he had lots of ideas on how he wanted to add different perspectives and improve his sequences. To establish the ‘stream bed’ he worked with the Laowa Pro2be 24mm T8 2x Probe, with eggs scattered throughout the rocks. He also used a slider system to move the camera and lens, giving a stable movement with the probe lens along the ‘stream bed.’ He also used the Laowa 2 Pro2be 24mm T8 2x Probe for some tighter shots where the alevin’s body and a couple of unhatched eggs are in frame. This lens gives a lot of options for building a sequence and was a heavy lifter for this shoot.

From Jason’s perspective “Laowa 24mm T8 2X Macro Pro2be: The Laowa Pro2be was an essential lens on this shoot, allowing for a variety close up and wider shots of the developing salmon eggs in the water. The ability to get into 2x magnification coupled the wider viewing angle of this lens allowed us to document the developing salmon embryos in a variety of ways - capturing things in fine detail, while still maintaining the idea of filming them in a stream environment.

Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X Ultra Macro and Laowa Aurogon FF 10-50X NA0.5 Supermicro APO: The Laowa 25mm Ultra Macro offered a very unique and interesting way to explore photographing these salmon eggs. To be able to now see beating hearts and the beautiful, abstract details of the eyes was incredible, this lens really opened up some unique perspectives, and creative moments. Likewise, the Laowa Aurogon Supermicro set allowed us to get closer revealing an unimaginable amount of detail. I’ll never forget seeing the blood flowing in the yolk sac of the salmon embryos, it was absolutely mind blowing.

Laowa 90mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO: I’ve often found that collaborating on projects can open the door to new creative ways and ideas to shooting familiar subjects as you’re able to see and bounce ideas off of fellow filmmakers. It wasn’t until I saw Kelsey shooting through the glass of our tank using the Laowa 90mm f2.8 Ultra Macro that it allowed for some really interesting compositions and lighting. With this setup we were really able to dial in some cave like scenes, which helped to replicate the concept that in nature these eggs would literally be buried under fine sediment and gravel as they developed.”

Screen shot by Jason Ching on Laowa 2 Pro2be 24mm T8 2x Probe

Screen shot by Jason Ching on Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X Ultra Macro

(Erin Ranney) RED screenshot of eye of the salmon egg shot with Laowa Aurogon FF 10-50x NA 0.5 Supermicro APO

I worked quite a bit with the Laowa Aurogon FF 10-50x NA 0.5 Supermicro APO. It provided us with a unique look at the eyed eggs. The eye of the egg is about the size of a pinhead. The 10x lens gave us a full screen (RED 6K footage) of the eye itself. We found some big challenges while working to do these shots. The eye itself moves around quite a bit (as the fetus moves) and as the egg is curved, so you often cannot get the full eye itself in focus as your focus plane is so shallow. If we were taking photos, this could be balanced with the technique of focus stacking.

Salmon dig redds with their tails, which are essentially nests in the gravel riverbeds or lakebeds that the salmon lay eggs in and defend. The female salmon will choose a particular area (maybe a shallow section of river or a spot with good gravel) and use her tail fin to dig a depression. She will then lay the eggs in the depression and the male salmon will spread his milt over them. Once the eggs are laid, she will move upstream, flap her tail to push gravel on top of the eggs. The fan of gravel (called the tail spill) has pockets where the eggs are buried. These redds will protect the eggs from being washed away and from predators. The tail spill moves oxygenated water over the eggs. Kelsey focused on using her FX3 and Laowa 100 mm Ultra Macro with a through the glass approach in order to show the tail spill sections of the redd where the eggs would hide beneath the gravel. Over the filming period, Kelsey was able to capture different stages of the egg development using this technique and still allow oxygenated water to flow through.

From Kelsey’s perspective “Laowa 100mm f/2.8 Ultra Macro APO SLR: Last year I was lucky enough to film salmon at a marine rescue center through their tank using a 100mm macro lens for a personal film project. I was worried about filming through the glass back then, but the shots ended up being some of the most beautiful of the entire film. I was really excited to try this technique again to get not only the ‘under water’ look, but also the ‘deeply buried’ one in an effort to replicate what the salmon do in real life. It was tricky because if the eggs were too close to the tank the focus would pick up any marks on the glass and the eggs could have a squished up look to them. It was really fun to experiment with the field of focus of this lens to get a variety of looks for each egg hatching.”

Screenshots from Kelsey Kroon’s footage- Laowa 100 mm Ultra Macro

Overall, we were excited about the opportunity to trial these lenses. We are able to provide my mom’s classroom with high quality imagery that allows the students to see salmon in new and exciting ways! A big thank you to Laowa for their support and to Kelsey and Jason (and of course Scout).

Testing Out Laowa's Lenses with Salmon