Composition in the Wild E4/4: The 3 skills that transform wildlife photography

Most wildlife photographers think better gear will fix their photos… but it won’t.

In this episode, you’ll learn the 3 skills that actually transform wildlife photography:
field decision-making, light mastery, and a simple system for consistent improvement.

If you want sharper images, better compositions, and more keeper shots—this is where it starts.

In this episode:

•  How to stop missing great shots in the field 
•  Why light matters more than your camera 
•  The simple system pros use to improve faster 

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Next episode: We’re talking about gear (what actually matters 👀)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Most photographers don't struggle because they lack gear. They struggle because they lack repeatable skills. And after years of shooting in the field, making mistakes, missing shots, and slowly figuring things out, I realized that almost everything comes back to three core skills. And it is just three. And that's what I'm going to be talking about today. And this is part four of composition in the wild, which I hope you've been finding useful. And this is the last part of this short series of podcasts. So my name is Graeme Elliott. If you find these useful, please remember to like and subscribe, and we'll get into it. So, what are the three skills that I'm talking about? The first one is field decision making, the second one is light mastery, and the third one is having a long-term development system. And these I believe are really important in allowing you to not only improve your photography, but once you have them in place, that really compounds. So you'll see the benefits, probably much earlier than you would expect. So let me go through each one and explain what I mean. Now, um, looking at field decision making, this is one that a lot of people don't even talk about. So this is the skill that determines whether you come home with something special or it could be nothing at all. And it's something that's happening constantly. So before you even take a shot, you're thinking about where do I position myself? Do I stay? Do I move? Do I wait this out or change location? Is this behavior worth committing to? Is the background working? So I've spoken about these aspects in previous podcast episodes, and I've gone into them in a bit more detail. But this really does make a big difference in the final results that you're able to achieve in your photographs, especially with wildlife, because most people are not thinking this way. So this does mark the difference, I believe, between experienced photographers and beginners. And I've already said before that the biggest difference isn't speed, although it can definitely play a part if you the more you practice, the faster you get at doing things. But more important than that is your decision-making quality. So deciding not only when to take the shot, because you can do that reasonably safety, safely, frankly, if you're doing bursts, that kind of thing. But it's making all of those other decisions that are made before you get to the point of hitting the shutter button. So what do most people do? Well, basically, they go into the field passively, they see an animal, they lift the camera, they start shooting. All they're doing is reacting to where they are, they're not really thinking things through. So what do you end up with? You get messy backgrounds, you've got maybe bad foregrounds, you've got bad angles. You can even miss important behavioral moments because you're not focusing on the right thing, you're not really observing, you're not composing your shot. So the shift here is intentional shooting. So strong photographers are constantly asking what's the best possible version of this scene. It's not just about can I get a photo? You really want to be thinking about what you're looking at either through your viewfinder or when you're composing the uh the image. So let's say so let's look at a simple example here, which is a bird perched on a branch. Now I've spoken about this before, and the main reason for going into this as an example is that it's something that, particularly when you're practicing before you get out into the field, it's something that most of us have access to. Most of us have access to birds and hopefully trees as well. So, what would most people do? Just shoot immediately from where they are. The alternative is to start thinking about can I move to get a cleaner background? That doesn't necessarily mean getting closer because often that will scare the subject away. But is there a better angle? Is there a cleaner background that you can get to fairly easily? Is the light better from another angle? And if you wait, will it change position? So this is why patience is such an important skill, if you like, to develop. It's certainly a very important attribute that good wildlife photographers have because you can potentially take hours to get the right position. But when you get that moment, it's absolutely worth it. And I've seen some amazing photographs, and the one I have in mind is a kingfisher diving down to get a fish, but it's been shot with the tip of the beak just touching the water, very high speed shot. Um, I forgot who I've forgotten who took it, but I know that it took them um a very long time and a lot of practice and a lot of patience before they got that shot, but it's absolutely brilliant. So I'm not saying that you necessarily have to do that, but do spend time with the animal looking at what it's doing and start looking for that different shot, that different position. And then the obvious follow-on from that is to simply ask what's the likely behavior here and what's likely to happen next. So sometimes the best decision you can make, or the let's give you a short list of decisions, is to first of all wait, it's to move, or it could even be to walk away. It could be that nothing's really set up for you, and yeah, you might want to take um, I think of them as contingency shots, it gives me something, but sometimes it's just not the day for it, and it's best to just walk away. It could be that the light is just really bad, it isn't likely to change soon. You might have a heavy overcast sky, you've got very little light. Um you can you've probably had those situations, so walking away is definitely hard, but it is quite powerful, or maybe you just use it as a training shoot and start working with backgrounds or something else. So, how do you build this skill? So you build field decision making by slowing down, ask better questions. I think more broadly, that's um a really important skill to have in life. If things aren't quite going your way, it's not asking why things are the way they are, but start thinking about the questions that you ask to get there in the first place, and you'll find that the people who are most successful are the people who ask the better questions. So rather than asking things like, why isn't this working? It could be better to ask, Well, how can I make this better? What incremental changes can I make? That kind of thing. It's that mental approach. Why has uh the reason I pick on that? So I've I've veered off slightly, but why has an aspect of victim about it? And you may or may not agree with me on that one, but I found in previous work I've done as a coach, why is one of those questions that I would always avoid using, and I would always always encourage my clients to avoid using. So always ask questions that start with how or what, those kind of questions. So once you've done that, don't forget to review your missed opportunities. So, again, after every shoot, instead of asking, did I get a good shot, ask did I make good decisions? Go back through each decision. I'm sorry if you can hear a dog in the background, it's been yapping for a while now, but not much I can do about it. Um, did I make good decisions? And then once you can answer that, you can review your decision-making process and the decisions that you are likely to be making. And this is really important because if your decisions get better, then your results will inevitably get better as well. It's just fundamental. So that's the first um aspect of it. This is looking at field decisions, field craft decisions. The second thing is mastering light, light mastery. And this is where things to really start to separate good photos from unforgettable ones because obviously, light photography fundamentally is about working with light, that's what we're doing. So wildlife photography isn't just about animals, it's about how light interacts with animals. And when you look at what you're presenting to people who are looking at your work, it's how they can relate to that animal. So light is really, really important. And again, the difference to focus on here is that most photographers treat light as something they adapt to, but strong photographers treat light as something they use. So, what do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it's it's understanding light beyond golden hour. Now, golden hour is great, but it is just a starting point. So, most if you're thinking about particularly a safari trip where you're somewhere like Africa, you know that you've got golden hour, that hour immediately after sunrise and the hour before sunset, when you get that um beautiful yellow, orange, red light. And you also know that middle of the day you've got very harsh light because you've got the sun directly overhead. So this is something that most of us know about, but taking that diving a little bit deeper into that, you need to start seeing the direction of the light. Where's it coming from? What's the quality of the light? Um, is it strong? Is it more diffused? What is the quality of the light you're working with? You've also you're also looking at the difference between the light in the background, the background light, against the light on the subject. And once you start looking at light, you also start to work with contrast and mood. Now, these can make a huge difference in the impact of a photograph. Um, and some of this you can do in post as well, so it doesn't all have to be done in the field, but certainly the more you can do in the field, the better. So just diving into this a bit a little bit more. So the direction changes everything. So if you have light coming from the front, it's clean, it's detailed, it's safe. If you've got light coming from the side of the subject, so that tends to emphasize texture, it emphasizes depth, it emphasizes drama because you're starting to get shadows uh introduced on the subject, on the subject animal. Where you go for a backlight, so the lights behind the animal, so the front light is behind you as you're looking at the animal, it's directly onto well, well, directly onto the subject. Backlight, it's behind them, and you can really create some amazing shots. These can be really atmospheric. You can work with glow, you can work with atmosphere, you can bring out detail on the edges of the animals. So I remember being in um uh my first time in Victoria Falls. Uh, we were heading back to where we were staying, sun was going down, and we finished up, just stopped behind the uh excuse me, a group of kudu. Uh, there were some other animals, but this particular female kudu had the light directly behind her, and I could see every hair on around the edges of her body, so it really brought out that detail. And in post, it was possible to really just experiment with that shot to either bring out more of the uh colour because it was gold now, so the green of the grass was really vivid. Um, I could either saturate the colours a little bit more, that gave me one feel to the image, or darken everything down. So I could also work with the shadow so that I could see her flanks and the markings on her flanks on my the side of it that was facing me, or I could just change that so that her it is pretty much in silhouette. So again, different lighting gives you different opportunities to create a more atmospheric image, and if you can get an atmospheric image, then that is a great way of really creating an engaging photograph. So, just to recap on that, so if you're photographing an animal from the front, that can give you a clear, uh perhaps more of a documentary style image because you don't have a lot of shadow on the face, and I'm thinking more of the face than the rest of the animal, so it's pretty straight on. Once you start going from the side, you start seeing a lot more of the textures of the animal, whether it's skin in the case of an elephant, or it might be fur in the case of a big cat, and you also get clearer shape definitions, so there will be shadows introduced depending on the exact angle of the light on the face, and that can create depth. So a front lit front-on light can flatten the animal, whereas side light starts to bring out the shape, start to uh give more depth to the subject, and then backlighting can create this rim light around the edges, you might get dust glowing. Um you can create these quite cinematic-looking images with backlighting. So the important thing about this is that none of these are right or wrong, but they do tell very different stories, so it comes down to what story do you want to tell and what are your story options when it comes to working in the situation you're in? And can a small change maybe in position on your part if that's an option for you? It isn't always, but if it is if it is an option, then work with it. And and I say it isn't always, but I'm thinking if you're in a four-wheel drive, now it does depend on the kind of vehicle you're in. But I've said before that these um four-wheel drives where they have the roof that lifts up, most people just stand up, possibly standing on a seat and shooting down. I always like to get down low between the seats and shoot directly out of a window if I can. So you may have those kind of opportunities, or it could even be just how you compose, exactly where you position the subject, what else is around that you can bring in to add to the story of that animal. How close do you want to crop in if you've got a zoom lens? Um, do you want a lot of background? Do you want a lot of context in this shot? Maybe shoot several at different zooms and see what you get. So, light and positioning, this of course, and I guess I've touched on it, is where it connects back to skill one. It isn't just about noticing the light, it is about using what you have and positioning yourself for it. So, as I've said, it might mean moving. You could move a few meters, you might drop down lower, you may might just wait for the sun to shift. It might be one of those situations where um often the sun just hits a certain position, and for a minute or two you've got this amazing shot, but then it's gone. And it just depends on where you are and and the situation. So, small adjustments can make for a really massive impact. Now, again, um, if you're impatient, this is going to be bad news because mastering light also requires patience, and sometimes the shot isn't ready yet. And I've spoken before about um, I think I shot three or six hundred images now, I can't remember. It was a giant kingfisher in Zimbabwe, and it had just got a fish, and it was sort of tenderizing this fish, I guess you'd describe it, by holding it in its beak and hitting it against a branch, and it did that for a while and then eventually swallowed it. But as it was doing that, I'm shooting all of these pictures, trying to get different angles, really photograph the behavior, and the light changed, and suddenly the light got far, far better. It started, we started to get into more of a golden light, more golden our light. The sun dropped a little bit lower, so suddenly the way the bird with its fish was illuminated was much much stronger, it was just a much more powerful image. So I basically reshot everything. So waiting and being patient can make a really big difference because sometimes the shot just isn't ready yet, or you don't know how the shot is going to develop. So be be prepared to wait for 10 minutes and have another go. So building this skill, what you're doing, and the way to do this is to get really, really conscious about how you're using light. So shoot the same subject in different light conditions that could be the bird on the branch that we spoke about earlier. Pay attention to how light direction changes your images, and have a look at your own photographs, look at the ones that worked, and ask yourself what is it about those images that make them work, particularly when it comes to the lighting. Have you been able to use the lighting? And the big difference here is that you once you master this, you step away from asking yourself if you got a good shot to predicting that you're gonna get a good shot when you put these things together or give it another two or three minutes the way the sun is moving at the moment, as long as the animal stays put, then you're gonna get a great shot. Or if you just move very slightly, there you go, you've nailed it. Okay, so I've spoken about two things now. Now, the final thing I want to talk about here is a long-term development system. So this really ties everything together, not just in this podcast, but really everything else I've said in this short series, and going beyond that, much of what I've spoken about in all of the podcasts, and there's um over 200 now. So the podcast where I talk about technique or observation or whatever it might be, it all really comes down to this third skill. So the reality is you can understand decision making, you can understand light, but if you don't have a system, you won't improve consistently. So, one of the things that I always say when I'm teaching, particularly when you're starting out, is to first of all get consistent. And frankly, it doesn't matter initially if you're consistently good or bad, but the important thing is to be able to consistently shoot the same kind of shot and get the same kind of results so that you can predict it. Now, there are going to be aspects of what you're doing that you won't like, and this is where you just work on it, and this is where this development system comes in. So you want to maintain your consistency, but as you work on each area, you lift the bar, you raise the bar another couple of notches in that area, then you raise it somewhere else, then somewhere else, then you come back to the original one again, raise that a couple more um notches. And this is really what I'm talking about because if you consistently do that, if you set yourself challenges, if you review what you're doing and recognize what you can do to improve it, you will get better and better. And all of a sudden, you'll find you're shooting really good stuff. And not only that, but you knew you were going to do it as well. So this really takes you away from photographers who improve randomly. So, people who do that, they basically go out when they feel like it, they watch tutorials occasionally, or they try things without structure, they just pick a subject, grab a YouTube video on it, and that's it. So, what tends to happen is that progress is very slow, it can be frustrating, and it will definitely be inconsistent because certainly if you're only going out occasionally, you might master something after a few trips, but then you don't go out for a few months. And by the time you come back again, you've forgotten how to do that. So, this is really important if you're serious about improving your photography. So, what we're talking about is shifting to intentional growth, and that's really what I'm talking about here. So, it isn't so much that you're just shooting, you're actually training yourself. And I think this is really important if you are doing something like a wildlife trip that might be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for you. You want to hit that trip as the best possible photographer you can be in the time that you have. And the way you're going to do that is by going out consistently with goals, evaluating what you're doing, and also knowing the basics and being able to apply them. So, this is really, really important. So, what do I mean by training? Well, really, you're looking at three things. So, one is focus. So, instead of trying to improve everything at once, just pick one skill. So, I've given you some ideas already, but for example, this month it might be light direction, next month it might be composition. So, but pick a skill, and then you can dive into that. So, it might be about finding clear backgrounds, and you can make a difference to the background even by a small shift in how you're positioning the camera. You can it can actually be quite impressive, the difference you can make. So, you really want to work with that and understand it. Secondly, it's about feedback. So, you need to review your work critically, and it's not to put yourself down, but just to objectively look at how you got that work to the point it's at. So, in other words, just ask yourself questions: what worked, what didn't, and what's the difference? The things that didn't work, what can you do to improve them? How can you improve those images? What's the thing that you can focus on next time when you are training? What's the aspect that you really just want to focus on and absolutely nail it? So that's really important that you are objective and honest about what you're doing. And the third aspect of this is repetition. So you do need volume, you need to be shooting regularly, you need to be, you know, doing whatever it is, a hundred shots a week, or whatever it might be for you. But it's also more than that, it's about intentional volume. So it isn't just about taking more photos, but it's about taking more purposeful photos, and those photos are the result of you implementing what you're observing, what you're teaching yourself, the feedback you're getting, or you might join a group where there's the opportunity to get feedback on images that you're producing. Um, hopefully, and and I would recommend with feedback, you get it from someone whose work you like, ideally, because then they are more likely to give you the kind of constructive feedback that you can implement and help you get to that kind of result. So this is really important, but this is where things get exciting because once you have a system, your decisions improve faster, you understand lights, you that understanding gets much deeper, and you get far more consistent, and your level of the that level, that quality level, is also far higher. So, what that all comes down to is that instead of the occasional good shot, you start producing them regularly. Okay, so I hope you found that useful. Just to recap, so the things that I've spoken about in this particular um episode are first of all to really look at your field decision making. It's about asking better questions, getting really clear on the questions that you need to be asking whenever you arrive somewhere. And I've spoken about this particularly in the first part of this um this series of four. But really work on your decision making and your questions, the questions that you're asking. Really work on let's call it your relationship with light. Um start looking objectively at where the light's coming from. If you see images you like, have a look at them and look at well, where's the where is the light from in this image, whether it's your own work or somebody else's, and start to really understand how a photographer has used light to get a particular result. So mastering light is really important, and then start working on an ongoing development system. And I say ongoing because I to me, photography is something that I just find I'm constantly learning. And it isn't so that that learning isn't just about the basics because if you if you if you're focused in your learning and you're focused in your photography, you nail those pretty quickly, but then you move on to composition, you move on to style, you move on to working with mood. Um, there are so many different aspects to photography that you can work with, and then looking at other people's work and being inspired by them, and then that gives you something else to aim for. That this to me is one of the pleasures of photography and why I've been doing it for such a long time, because it is one of those things that I think constantly pays off. So I do strongly recommend that you have a development system of some form, and um that you adapt you adapt it, you adopt it, uh, you adapt your time, maybe so that you can really give it the attention it needs. So coming back to this, if you focus on these three things, not the gear, but what you're actually doing, then you'll see real progress. And more importantly, you'll start to feel in control of your results. So you're no longer just hoping for a good shot, but you're quite consciously creating the conditions where you're much more likely to get one. So that is it for this short series of episodes, this um series where we're looking at composition in the wild and the different aspects of composition. Now, there are a couple of things to um just be aware of. First of all, next time, uh, I'm gonna do an experiment. So, so far the podcast has been audio only, but I will be doing a video next time. So um when I record it, because I've done that yet, uh, you should be able to still listen to it as a podcast. But for those of you who listen on YouTube, and there are um quite a few thousand of you who uh are actually followers now, so thank you so much for that. Uh, but it I understand it can be a bit frustrating, particularly something is essentially a visual activity. So I'm gonna um start experimenting with um producing some more videos, it won't be every podcast, but it will be there. But equally, I want to um respect and appreciate the people who followed me on the audio side, so there will be something for you. So that's the first thing that's coming up, and that'll be that we'll be looking at gear, but from a slightly different perspective. And the other thing I just want to, I guess, announce at this point, um, that there will be information on my website, but as I record this, it isn't there yet, is that I've started um mini courses. So there is a full photography online course on my website. There are two in fact, one for smartphone, which is getting a little bit old, I have to say, and the other ones with the SLR mirrorless. So they're definitely there. If you have no knowledge at all and you want to go through um a step-by-step process of learning photography, it's designed, as I say, for no knowledge whatsoever. You can access every module as often as you like. There are practical things to do at the end of each lesson. So each lesson tends to just focus on one aspect. Uh, but I've also introduced mini courses. So these are on for six weeks. They're a little bit different because they have six lessons. One is dropped every Monday. You can, they they're all around 30 to 40 minutes, so they're not too long. They focus on one particular area, and you then have a week to apply things. So there will be activities with them. But also, there are three live sessions, so Zoom calls where you can send images prior to the call for feedback. You can ask questions, have a discussion, and also there's a Facebook group for just people on that particular uh mini course. So you can submit work just to share or to ask for feedback. So it's just a slightly different approach. So the composition will have started, I think, when this goes out. And there is another one coming up, which is looking at wildlife photography specifically. So if that's likely to be of interest to you, please well, please sign up to the website. You can um, or my mailing list, I should say, you can find that on the website www.ge.photography. Uh, there's um a let's be friends panel, so you can uh join the mailing list. And that's it. So uh as I say, please remember to like and subscribe. If you have any comments, please uh make a comment wherever you're listening to this. And I will speak to you next time. So bye for now and enjoy your photography.