Welcome back to part two. Now, have you ever taken a photograph that's technically very sharp but is actually very boring? And you'd be surprised just how many wildlife photographs I've seen that exactly fit that criteria. And the bottom line, and what we're going to talk out today, talk about today, is that sharpness isn't the whole story. So most people focus on getting a really pin-sharp image, and that's not everything. So, what we're going to do today in part two of this series is to go through five mistakes that relate to composition. And composition, I think, is one of probably the most important thing to master in terms of creating or your ability to create engaging photographs. And what I mean by that is just photographs that the people really enjoy. They they really stand out from literally hundreds, thousands of really, really boring wildlife photographs and general photographs that are out there. So that's what we're going to look at. And um, without further ado, I shall jump in. I will just say that if you're finding this series useful, please like, subscribe, hype if you're on um YouTube and you have that available. And uh you're always welcome to support the podcast. So the first mistake then is just centering the subject by default. Um, it's fine to do that deliberately because you can get some very high impact images when you deliberately center the subject. So, for example, if you do a really tight crop on the face, you've got the eyes looking straight at you. That can be a really powerful image, particularly if you're using the lighting correctly. But that's not really what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is where the subject finishes up in the middle of the frame simply because that's what you do every time. You don't really give any thought to what the overall image looks like. It's simply there's a lion, and snap, you've got it. Maybe you've just shot 50 pictures of it, and it's dead center every time. So why is that a problem? Well, to get back to the the earlier comment I made, it's pretty boring. And one of the really important things to understand when it comes to composition is how you use the space in the image. Now, um, the terms that get used are positive space, which refers to the subject, and negative space, which is the space that's basically not your subject. Now, I don't particularly like the term uh simply because I feel like it's negative suggests it's somehow detracting from the photograph, but that space and how you use it is really vital to how that image works. So, one of the places to start and where most people start is the good old rule of thirds. Now, it is just a guide, it's not the be-all and end all. But if you use rule of thirds, first of all, the grid itself is likely to be on your camera, it's likely to be on the viewfinder if you have one or on the screen at the back for sure. And it just helps you to uh reposition the subject, and in the case of an animal, it's normally the eye that's closest to me that I use, unless the other one's really well lit. And what it does, you're putting it away from the center. So if you're not familiar with the rule of thirds, very briefly, you divide the frame, you add two vertical lines equally spaced, two horizontal lines equally spaced. So you've basically divided the frame into nine rectangles, and you position your point of focus, which is the thing you're focusing on, on one of the four crossover points or on one of the lines. And it doesn't really matter where, that's completely up to you, but it does help you to start creating more dynamic images. And the way you use the space is often to create space for the animal to move into or create space for the animal to look into. So if you've got an animal looking, um, let's say it's on a savannah, let's say a cheetah, and it's just looking and watching what's going on. So from your perspective, it's looking towards your left. Put the cheetah over on the right hand side somewhere. You can use that vertical line from all of thirds if that's helpful, but stick the cheetah on that line so that you have the cheetah over in the right hand side of the frame and empty space in the left because what you're doing, you've created space for the animal to look into. And one of the reasons that this works is that we're natural storytellers, so we love stories, and what using space does, it starts to create literally space for us to write our own story, and that in itself can make the image much more compelling. Now, I'm not going to go into that anymore, and I will say on the composition, uh, I do cover that in my um Discovering DSLR and uh mirrorless photography course. From time to time, I run a six-week course. I may not run it again this year. Um, it's just in the process of running now. Uh, but it's possible I might run it again later in the year, but it doesn't run very often. That's a six-week course focusing purely on um composition. So that's mistake number one, centering the subject by default. Now, mistake number two is ignoring the background, and this fits very well because having decided where your subject is going to be, and you've got all that negative space now, or all that space to use. Do you know what's actually in there? So, again, something that's very easy to do, especially with wildlife, because often your subject is moving, and you can't set it up nicely against a nice clean background. There might be um trees and branches and leaves and all sorts of other things in the background. But what can you do about them? Well, the first thing is to just notice they're there because a lot of people will focus on the subject and completely ignore what's happening in the background, and of course, that background will be in the final image, and it's only when they look at the final image and they can't reshoot it at that point that they realize the whole thing looks pretty horrible. So, what can you do when you have a busy background? Well, if the animal isn't moving, can you change your position slightly so that you've got a cleaner background? If the animal isn't moving but is likely to move, where is it likely to go to? So it might be worth hanging on. Because if, for example, it's in um trees on the edge of a forest and it's likely to go out into a more open area where you've got a cleaner background, maybe it's sky, maybe it's savanna, maybe it's something else, then it might be worth just grabbing one or two images while it's in the forest, but then hanging on and just watching what happens, excuse me, what happens because you might in that instance be able to shoot a much, much better photograph. Um, what if the animal's moving? Well, where's it going? And you may or may not be able to do much about the background, but this is where you start thinking about how close you're zooming in. Um, depth of field is a really important one in this instance. So it may be that by narrowing your depth of field and being very precise in how you focused on the animal, then that really puts the background out of focus if it's not really helping the animal and draws the viewer's eye back to the subject. So that's the key, really, to what you want to do. So a really good habit to get into is to just have a look. Look at what's in the background before you start shooting. Maybe think about how you're going to handle that. Uh, if if it doesn't add to the image of the uh the subject, then maybe think about putting it out of focus. Um, but have a think about how you want to handle that particular situation. And this is where you end up amputating things. So it's where you're cutting off limbs, the tail, or you're really ruining the the moment itself. So, what do I mean by that? Well, it's where when you're framing part of the animal gets cut off. Typically, it's probably the feet or um maybe the tail, something like that. But because you're so absorbed by looking at the subject, you forget to think of how the rest of the animal, I'm talking wildlife, so it's be an animal, uh, looks in the frame. And it's only when you look at the image afterwards you realize that, uh, that would have been so much better if you could see its feet or things like this. So, unless you're deliberately intending to do a very tight crop on, let's say, the face of the animal, what I would suggest you do is rather than zooming all of the way in, is to actually pull out a little bit, create some space around the subject. Now, there are some uh reasons for doing that. So, one is it allows you to anticipate action where the animal is likely to move and still keep it completely in frame. So if you've zoomed in a little bit and then it does something different, it changes direction and you weren't expecting it, you weren't ready for it, you might miss what's going on completely, or you might only have a part of it, and it doesn't really work as a photograph. So if you pull out and make the subject a little bit smaller in the frame, what does that do? Well, it means that you're much more likely to capture everything, and then when you're working with the final image or when you're producing the final image, you can always do a bit of cropping or things like that just to tweak the shot so that you then have the composition that gives the result that you were hoping for in the first place. So there's if you've got too much image, put it that way, you can always reduce it a little bit. You can always crop in and get a tighter crop, but it includes the bits that you want. So it might be the animal's feet, for example, which might typically be typically uh be missed off if you've zoomed in a bit too much. Um, the other thing is if you are shooting for stock photography, the thing to do there is to always have extra room around your subject because that allows editors to crop that image to suit their particular articles, so the format they're using. And if there is space there, they can then put headlines on the image itself. So that's slightly different application. But if you are shooting images for stock, then it's worth bearing in mind. So when it comes to cutting off limbs, tails, that sort of thing, always just zoom out a little bit further than you would normally have done. And it just gives you a bit of a safety margin and a bit of flexibility, it gives you some options when it comes to editing the final image. Okay, so that was mistake number three. With number four, it's kind of similar, but it's not leaving room for the animal to move into. So, what am I talking about there? Well, it's a little bit like what I was speaking about with mistake number one. When you start using space in an image, you start to tell a story, you start to, or you literally create space for a viewer to build their own story. So if you've left space in front of the animal, so if it's moving left to right, and you keep that animal in the left-hand side of the frame, it has visual space to move into. And that's quite a natural looking composition. It's the kind of composition where a lot of times you won't even notice it because it's such a natural thing. It's you can see it's moving, however, whatever position it's in, maybe you've blurred it slightly, whatever it might be. But you've given it space to move into. What you've also done by creating that space in front of it is to suggest that there's something of interest there that's just out of frame. And again, this comes back to the storytelling aspect. People will start to create their own story around it. It's not going to be a big one, and they may not even be consciously doing it, but it's what we tend to do as people. If you leave space behind an animal, then so, for example, if again it's looking uh from left to right, but you position it this time on the right hand side of the frame, so it's looking out of the frame on the right, but there's a lot of empty space behind it. The suggestion there is that something is potentially there behind it, something might be about to attack it, but there's something potentially behind the animal. And if you look at certain TV shows, I've noticed it with some of the BBC shows, but I'm sure others do it. Sometimes they'll frame a person on one side of the frame or the other with a big gap behind them. And it's it's a way of creating tension, it's a way of creating expectation that something's going to happen. So, this is what I mean by the power of starting to understand composition. So that was mistake number three. Uh, sorry, that was mistake number four. Um, mistake number five, shooting at just the same eye-level shot every time. So what I mean by that is just shooting either at your normal eye-level height or not changing your position. And what I see a lot in um safari situations where there's um the you know the classic four-wheel drive with the roof that lifts up, and the moment that roof goes up, everybody jumps up high and they're shooting down onto the animal, and they can be some of the most boring safari pictures you're likely to see. So um, my suggestion is to just think about the things I've already mentioned. So, if you're shooting down high, down onto the animal, what's the background like? Now, it might be fine, um, it might just be grass or rocks or something like that, uh, but it might also be pretty boring. And one of the things you can do with your background is to create um context for the animal, so give a clearer idea of the kind of environment that that animal is in. If you're shooting down onto the animal, you lose that option. If you can get low, that that's what I will generally do because the closer you can get down to the animal's eye level, the better. And I've even got photographs of um, so I'm thinking of some lines actually that I I shot. I just got down really low within the vehicle, but because I did get down low, it looks like I'm almost lying on the grass with them and at down at their level, and that creates a different kind of shot. It's a more intimate shot, but it's also more unusual because pretty much everybody else that I was with on that particular occasion was standing up and shooting down onto the animals. So, really, my my tip is yeah, by all means shoot what you'd normally shoot, but every now and again just try and get down as low as you can and try a different perspective and see what that gives you. Okay, so um those are the five mistakes that I wanted to talk about in this episode to part two of this series. So they look at composition, and as I've said, composition is really important. And just to recap on the uh the five mistakes, the first one, we're just centering the subject every time, just sticking it in the middle. And and from what I've said since I first mentioned that a few minutes ago, hopefully that's got a little bit clearer. How not doing that can be uh very helpful to your photographs. You start to get more options. So don't center the subject by default, put it off to one side or the other and experiment with it, have a huge foreground or a huge area. Um, you know, have the animal low down in the frame and see what that does for the filling of space, that kind of thing. So don't subject, uh don't center the subject by default. Number two, be aware of the background. So the mistakes mistake is ignoring the background. So it's really important when you get where you're going to have a look at the background, what's likely to be behind the subject, and then how can you use that in a positive way that contributes to the shot? Or is it better to just go for as narrow a depth of field as you think you can get away with and just try and put the background more out of focus so it doesn't compete with the subject when it comes to uh looking at the uh the image. Number three, mistake number three was cutting off body parts basically, so it could be the limbs or feet or a tail, or even losing the moment. So the point there is to just back off a little bit, zoom out a little bit so that there's more space around the uh the subjects. That means they've got somewhere to go. If they do move unexpectedly, they've still got a chance of catching the whole moment. Uh it means that you can fine-tune the composition when you get to post-processing. So you might then crop in in a particular way. Um, but it means that you're not going to lose body parts, which is uh the important part. And mistake number four was not leaving room for the animal to move into. So this is again about how you start to use let's call it negative space, not my favorite term, but we'll go with that, and how that can really begin to contribute to the story around the animal, because there's a reason why you photograph that animal. So, what's the story? Is it on the alert for prey? Is it in danger of being hunted itself? What's going on? So, how you use the visual room, which might be room for it to move into, or room behind it, the space behind it, that can have a big impact on the emotional feel, the mood of the image that you've shot. And then finally, with mistake number five, try to avoid um shooting at eye level every time or doing the same level of shots. So if you are on a four-wheel drive uh with one of those roofs, by all means get up there and have a good look, but um also think about other options and look at how you might be able to get lower and get a different kind of shot, and that that kind of image will feel um often more intimate and have a bigger impact. So that is uh part two. So that covers composition. What I'm going to be looking at in part three, which comes uh which we'll be able to get on Friday uh next week, is mistakes that cost you the shot even before you raise the camera. So this is what we've looked at so far is with the first episode, we were looking more at the technical side. Uh, with the second exercise, uh second part, we've been looking more at the artistic side to composition. And in part three, we're going to move on to fieldcraft. And this also is really important if you've heard me talk about wildlife photography and um how to prepare for it. So I won't say any more about that. As I said, please remember to like and subscribe and all that kind of thing. Um, if you want to support the podcast, if you're getting real value from these, um, it really does help just to make a small donation somewhere, um, buy a coffee or just um donate to the podcast. It just allows me to keep doing these, um keep these series going. Okay, hope you found that useful. I'll speak to you next time. Bye for now.