My lens is a 25x macro, you can try to find one less than that. It might prove more versatile for fish photography rather than my use of it for insects lol your phone camera though will still have it's limited focal range, but a lens may bring it closer for you to where you want it.
It takes practice, but you are getting the idea of it well and your photos are showing that.
The next step would be learning how to crop them effectively.
In photography, there's a rule of "grid of nines". Basically an imaginary grid of which you choose your focal point and balance of negative space. It's usually applied to landscape photography, but it is also used in aquascaping as well. I use this but I tweak how it's used depending on the subject I'm taking a photo of. If I'm doing a close up, I like to have the fish's face central to the image.
Did up an example for you, using my pseudomugil gertrudae as a subject.
Here is the original uncropped image. He's out of place, image is unbalanced. He's too far left and it feels weird to look at.
Using your photo editor of choice, you can crop the image. Some have the grid on the cropping tool so you can visually see this imaginary grid guide. I also like to lock the original image proportions instead of custom cropping.
In this, I place the fish's face central to the image. If you were wanting to take a wider angle photo with more background as a feature and have the fish as a focal point to the larger photo, you'd place the fish along one of the 4 points where the lines intersect each other. Ideally, you'd want the fish facing the center of the grid, from whichever point you place it.
But for this one, his body is placed on one if those points, with his face in the very center. Hes at an upward right slanted position, so i placed his body on the top right intersection.
This brings to the final result:
You don't want to crop too heavy though, because it can ruin your image quality. Learning where that balance is will come down to you playing around with it yourself though. If it becomes pixilated, grainy, or too small, you've cropped too close.
It takes practice, but you are getting the idea of it well and your photos are showing that.
The next step would be learning how to crop them effectively.
In photography, there's a rule of "grid of nines". Basically an imaginary grid of which you choose your focal point and balance of negative space. It's usually applied to landscape photography, but it is also used in aquascaping as well. I use this but I tweak how it's used depending on the subject I'm taking a photo of. If I'm doing a close up, I like to have the fish's face central to the image.
Did up an example for you, using my pseudomugil gertrudae as a subject.
Here is the original uncropped image. He's out of place, image is unbalanced. He's too far left and it feels weird to look at.
Using your photo editor of choice, you can crop the image. Some have the grid on the cropping tool so you can visually see this imaginary grid guide. I also like to lock the original image proportions instead of custom cropping.
In this, I place the fish's face central to the image. If you were wanting to take a wider angle photo with more background as a feature and have the fish as a focal point to the larger photo, you'd place the fish along one of the 4 points where the lines intersect each other. Ideally, you'd want the fish facing the center of the grid, from whichever point you place it.
But for this one, his body is placed on one if those points, with his face in the very center. Hes at an upward right slanted position, so i placed his body on the top right intersection.
This brings to the final result:
You don't want to crop too heavy though, because it can ruin your image quality. Learning where that balance is will come down to you playing around with it yourself though. If it becomes pixilated, grainy, or too small, you've cropped too close.
