Wildlife Photography Composition tips.
Composition guidelines in photography can often help you to enhance the impact of your photos.It may sound clichéd, but the only rule in photography is that there are no rules. However, there are are number of established composition guidelines which can be applied in almost any situation, to enhance the impact of a scene.
Composition in wildlife photography is a skill that needs to be acquired like any other. To help you get to grips with composition in nature photography, here are five tips to try.
1.The Rule of thirds
Divide the scene in to thirds, and placing your subject along the line of one of these thirds, you end up with a nicer composition than if the subject was placed dead centre. It’s certainly worth a try and works well with a figure in a landscape, for example.
Do not stick by this rule constantly, you can get very impressive results by breaking the Rule of thirds at times when placing the subject dead centre of the frame for extra impact, for example.
2. Leading lines
Another tried and tested technique, particularly in landscape photography, is to have some kind of device in the frame that leads in the eye – this could be a road or path, or even shadows winding up a hill. This works well and adds depth to an image, but the natural lines in a landscape can work well too. The idea is to try and draw in the viewer’s eye, something that very ‘flat’ images are unable to do.
3. Depth of field
Exposure and focussing techniques, such as carefully controlling depth of field, can also be useful compositional devices in their own right. Blowing out the background on a portrait while keeping the subject sharp obviously establishes the subject as the main point of interest, but you can still reveal important elements in the background, despite the blur. Try shooting at a slightly narrower aperture, e.g. f/3.5 rather than f/1.4, and you will still retain some detail in the blurry background – a good way of establishing context and relationships.
4. Simple Clean Backgrounds
Take special care that the background does not include distracting objects or takes the concentration from the main object. Simplicity is the key.
5. Golden Hour.
To improve composition; make the most of the light one hour before dusk and dawn, such as late afternoon, also known as “the golden hour” to produce warm colours which will enhance your image.
