Like All Forms Of Photography, Composition Is Critical

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

Like all forms of photography, composition is key to delivering the message that you wish to send to a viewer.

Wildlife photographers, in general, seem to ‘somewhat’ ignore this component of their work. This is probably due to the fact that it’s hard to get a shot, period, much less compose one in the instant that it happens.

Still, it should always be a concern, and oftentimes you can adjust things in post-processing, if you’re thinking about it.

Above is an excellent portrait of this owl from a technical and biological viewpoint. From a composition viewpoint, it’s not working well at all.

Half of the frame on the right of this photo is wasted space. That wasted negative space creates two problems. First of all, the subject isn’t placed in a pleasing position within the frame. Secondly, the owl creates a framebreak through its line of sight leading off the left edge. The bit of foliage in the upper left of the frame is an ‘eye snag.’

Quick Tip: An eye snag is any object near the edge of the frame that causes a distraction away from the subject.

A post-production crop of the original creates a much better composition.

This is now a much better photograph.

The downside to cropping is the loss of resolution.

In this case, the original file was 63 MP, and the cropped file is now 29 MP. This image, even after being cropped, has enough resolution to be printed or used in virtually any application.

Quick Tip: Always look at the entire frame of your picture and decide if the composition could be improved!

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!)