This Advanced Concept in Bird Photography Is Crucial

^{Note: This tip comes from the photography case study #3 ‘Composition’ inside Photzy’s - 5 Extended Case-Studies on Bird Photography}

The above photo makes perfect compositional use of orientation, space, and natural flow, and there is one element of the shot that commands this composition.

At the end of this quick tip, I will reveal what that one element is, but first, let's define those three terms.

Orientation: This is the photographer’s decision whether to hold the camera horizontally or vertically.

Space: Everything that you see in the viewfinder of the camera is the ‘space,’ sometimes also referred to as the frame. Or the space within the frame.

Natural Flow: This is the photographer’s determination of the scene and decides whether the orientation should be vertical or horizontal.

Tip #1 – Learn these three terms and practice them until you no longer have to think about the best choice. It’s like riding a bike. You practice, and then one day you get it.

This photograph demonstrates a poor choice of orientation. Most of the space is background and provides no benefit to the composition or subject.

By cropping, the orientation is vastly improved. All the original elements including the background colors are still in the shot but the bird has been ‘pushed forward’ to be dominant in the composition.

Cropping, however, comes at a cost. This shot lost almost half of its resolution to correct for the poor use of orientation.

Tip #2 – Train to make good orientation decisions at the point of creating the picture versus repairing in post-production.

This photograph has a poor use of space. The interesting part, the face, is placed almost off of the frame.

Just the slightest change in the use of space has vastly improved this beautiful picture.

Tip #3 – Look from corner to corner in your viewfinder before releasing the shutter. Can you improve the use of space with a slight change of camera point of view (POV)?

This photograph makes poor use of natural flow.

There are many aspects to a natural flow. I’ll cover more in future tips. This natural flow is completely decided by motion. This bird is flying to the right. That creates a natural flow of left to right.

When motion is used poorly, it creates what is known as a frame break. This bird appears to be flying off of the picture!

A crop has improved the natural flow. Natural flow is a complex topic; I will cover it further in future quick tips.

Tip #4 – When considering motion in a natural flow, always allow more space ‘in front’ of the subject than behind.

The key element in this photographic composition is the length of the beak. It creates a left-to-right natural flow. This required a horizontal orientation. And finally, the photographer left more space to the right than to the left of the subject.

Want more? If you want to learn more about bird photography, and capture beautiful shots of your own, we recommend downloading and printing out Photzy’s 10 Bird Photography Cheat Sheets (Special bonus available now!)