Stop Taking Random Wildlife Photos E3/4: Why Your Photos Are Close—But Not There

You review the photo later, and at first, it looks promising. The subject is sharp, the exposure is good, and technically everything seems fine — but somehow the image still doesn’t fully work.

In this episode, we explore why some wildlife photos feel close to being strong but never quite get there. We look at the subtle problems that hold images back and why editing often fails to fix them.

We discuss:

• why “almost good” photos are so frustrating
• the importance of clarity and subject separation
• how timing affects emotional impact
• the role distracting elements play in weakening an image
• why editing amplifies structure instead of creating it
• how stronger photographers diagnose problems earlier in the process

This episode is about learning to recognise what’s really holding your images back — and how understanding those patterns can improve your photography in the field.

Part 3 of the series: How to Stop Taking Random Wildlife Photos.

It's time for another podcast...

Thank you for listening. Please Like and Subscribe, as it really does make a difference.

If you enjoy my podcasts and would like to be kept up to date about podcasts, webinars and courses, please join my mailing list by clicking here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello again. Now, if you have been listening over the last couple of weeks, you'll know that I've been talking about how to stop taking random wildlife photographs. And if you listened two weeks ago, you'll know that I went through a process of how you move from random to much more deliberate images and the kinds of things that you have to think about. Unfortunately, though, in doing that, you end up with a big checklist of things that you also need to be aware of when you are going to take your photograph. So that's what we covered in last week's episode. And that's all good. So you've got a basic structure, but where I left you last week is look well, basically saying that the hardest photographs to understand are the ones that almost work. And that's the subject of this episode. Where rather than fixing almost good photographs, we try and avoid them in the first place. Because basically, if you try and fix an almost good photograph, you generally make it worse, and that is really not what we're looking for. So that's what we're going to dive into in today's episode. Hopefully, you'll find it useful. Please remember to like, subscribe, um, subscribe money. That's all good as well. Helps me, uh, helps me to keep this all going. So, what actually happens? You've been out, you've thought about what you want to take, you've got your checklist, you've been practicing, you when you're in the field, you're going through identifying your subject, you're looking at backgrounds, you're looking at lighting, all those things we spoke about. You've got your photographs, but then when you start looking at them later, something feels wrong. And so you dive into your editor, whatever you're using, and that doesn't really solve the problem either. And this is the issue that we're going to look at in this episode. So, why are all most good photos so frustrating? The problem with them is that they are close enough to good to create an attachment. So, you know, something's right about them, but there are also some other problems, and it's not quite clear what they are. And you end up getting into this loop, you go down the rabbit hole of endlessly tweaking the image in post, and you're never quite getting it where it needs to go, you're not quite sure where it needs to go, but what you can be sure of is that it's getting worse every time you tweak it. So if you haven't been in that situation, the chances are you will at some point. So, why why do these photos fail? So, the big thing to remember is that most weak photographs don't fail because there's because it's something terrible, because they're really badly shot, or your setup's bad, your settings are all over the place. They fail because nothing's actually quite clear. So, I'm gonna take you through some problems. There's a three problems I'm gonna take you through, three things that uh contribute to you having these issues with your images, and we're gonna look at where they come from, what you can do about them. So, the first one is weak subject separation. So, what do I mean about that? Well, the very first thing that we're looking at in that checklist we spoke about last week is having a clear subject, and this is pretty much a mantra for most, I'd say pretty much all photographs. What's the subject? What as a viewer, what am I supposed to be looking at? You can also think of your subject as a point of interest, maybe your primary point of interest, but you can have other points of interest in there as well. So having a good subject is really important. Other points of interest, as in other things that stand out in the frame, really want to either support the subject or support the story that you're telling. So last time I spoke about um just an occasion, it was in South Africa, it was early in the morning, and we were just going back, so we're in a vehicle, um, heading back from doing some sunset, sunset, sunset, sunrise, uh, photographs, and we saw two lions sitting next to a bush, and there's a very young, pretty much sort of baby, very young wilder beast just sort of prancing past them, uh, definitely less than 100 metres from them, and blissfully unaware that those lions were there. So, in that instance, that's an example of having two points of interest. So, the first point of interest is the lions because I have to be closer to them. So, they were larger in the frame, they're more of a tan colour, they look in fact, they look a little bit like the colour of termite mounds. So that's actually a really good way to camouflage when you're in green because it sort of looks like a termite mount, and then you realize it's a line. So that's not a mistake you want to make too often. But they're the primary subject, and then the secondary subject and the other point of interest, which is also tells the story of the frame, is this young wildebee. So basically, you need to have clear separation, you need to think about what's in the frame, and for somebody looking at the image, which includes you, when you're looking back at the images afterwards, that that needs to be very, very clear. So, in other words, you don't want visual confusion, you don't want your subject blending into the environment, you need emphasis. So, if you've got a lack of emphasis on either your subject or maybe one of the supporting elements, they're not going to stand out. So, what you end up with is something pretty bland, it might even look very two-dimensional. Um, so you you have to the the trick, and this is something uh that I found when I was first getting into using Photoshop and all these things. For me, the subject is correct, or the subject separation is there when the subject pops, and that's normally a result of getting the contrast right. So, contrast basically allows you to separate one part of the image from another. And once you get the contrast right, the subject sort of pops out of the frame a little bit, and it's the only way I can describe it, but at that point, that's where I leave the contrast because I now know that my subject is not part of the background, it's not part of anything else that's going on. And if you don't do that, viewers will lose interest very, very quickly. And again, as I've said, this is one of the situations that you'll have where the photo feels like it should be right, but it's just not there, it's just not quite getting it. So that's the first thing to look at. Do you have weak subject separation? Now, the second or the second problem I want to cover is weak timing. So, what do I mean by that? You can have an image that's technically quite good. I mean, it can be well focused, it can be nicely exposed, but what you're looking at it frankly isn't very exciting. It could be that the animals just sat there, um, not doing very much, uh, maybe looking at you, maybe not, maybe sleeping. Who knows? But the behavior itself is not engaging. There's there's no there's no reason for the viewer to take a second look at it. Uh, it might be that the posture's awkward. Um, in that situation, the viewer might take a second look, but not for not for good reasons. Uh, so and so with wildlife, you can't do too much about posture, but you can do something about the angle that you're shooting, or maybe wait a moment. So it may be that by waiting a few seconds or even minutes, the animal will change position or change its pose, and you've got a much nicer, more natural-looking image that's far more engaging, and this is what it comes down to. If you have an image that is not engaging, you have no emotional content in it at all. And what I've said before um is that the images that we're really attracted to, the best images, and and and I would argue this for pretty much everyone's favorite images, they're images where we feel some sort of an emotional connection. What that is, I don't know. That's obviously down to the subject, it's down to the story, but that's what makes the connection, and there are various ways of doing that, and images don't have to be technically correct. So um, last time I spoke about a group of runners that somebody photographed on a photo walk, they were all a little bit blurry. Um, and then but there was one lady looking back, so they'd gone past us, were running away, and one lady was had turned her head, so she was looking back at us, and it was just an amazing photograph. There was an instant emotional connection, and what we do subconsciously is we start writing our own stories for all of these things. So, was she feeling lonely? Was she being abducted by a pack of runners? I don't know, but you know, we we we like to fill in the gaps, but if you do not have that emotional connection, somebody looking at that image is not going to be writing the story for that image, and that's gonna lose you a lot of connection. It's it's gonna you're just gonna lose your viewer with that particular image. So the two things to think about are yes, you want to if you when you can, you want to be technically good, but of course, wildlife um they're not well animals aren't models, usually, they uh don't take direction very well at all. Um, they um you can't ask them to do it again. So you really need to capture the moment, and what I spoke about last time with the structure was to put you in the best possible position to get a correctly exposed, correctly focused, correctly balanced image as soon as you hit the shutter button. But of course, things don't end there. But on other occasions, things happen just so fast, you've got to get in there fast, and this is the importance of practicing all this stuff, so that even if things are happening quickly, you've got the odds stacked more in your favour that you're gonna produce an image that's engaging, that's as technical technically correct as you can get. But remember, it doesn't have to be technically correct. That's um yeah, I I was watching somebody else's um YouTube uh video uh the other day and actually talking about myths around photography, and um uh thinking about it, I'll probably do something like that myself because a lot of these myths are things that put people off photography, and and most of these things are absolute nonsense, and one of them is that images have to be technically correct, uh, they don't. So it's more important, I would say, to get something that's emotionally engaging, even if it isn't technically correct. If you if you miss the technically correct shot, it still opens the door for something that might be slightly abstract, you might want to switch it to black and white. You know, there is there are still options for you afterwards, although it's not plan A, there's definitely a plan B, probably a plan C as well. So don't get hung up on being technically technically, I can't even say it technically correct, every every time. It's about capturing the connection with that image. So that's problem two, that's weak timing for whatever reason. And then the third problem is distracting elements. So every image is made up of multiple elements. So the subject is the primary element, that's the one that we really want to stand out. We want people to connect with it. That's what the sub that the subject is what the photograph is about. That's who or what the story is about. There are other elements within the photograph, though, which might be a secondary point of interest, they could be leading lines, they could be all sorts of things. They're definitely background and foreground. So this is where, again, it's really important when you're looking through the viewfinder or looking at the screen or however you're shooting your photographs, that you see exactly what's in the frame, not just the subject, which a lot of people do, but look at the rest of it. And then this is one of the early parts, and this is something I the point I made last time. That really good wildlife photographers don't immediately get to place and stick a camera in their face and start going. They they actually look around, they start working out what's what. So try and get in the habit of doing that. And the kind of things to look for are things like bright spots, because remember, and I actually do a composition course on this and um a full photography online course as well. And in both of them, I dive into this stuff a lot more detail, but you need to understand how your brain works, not all of it, but just the bit that is to do with looking at things, and there are certain elements that are likely to be on your image that immediately get priority as far as your brain is concerned, as things that it wants to identify. So, an example of this would be warning colours, so reds, oranges, yellows, and if you think about it, if you think about nature, so remember we're primates and we've evolved in a natural environment. In a natural environment, there are things that are potentially lethal to us. It might be other could be other other animals, it could be plants, but often those animals and plants, not always obviously, but a lot of them have a certain use of certain colours. And so we've evolved to instantly recognize those colours. We don't even do it consciously, and this is the power, and one of the things I love about teaching composition is that once you start to understand these rules, you can start to guide how somebody's eye moves through a particular frame. So colour is important, bright spots are important because we're attracted to bright areas, and you need to see how they're working. Are they supporting the subject? So coming back to that line again, are they supporting the subject? If they're not, then you probably want to try and exclude them as much as possible. If you or if you can't exclude them, see if you can just set a very narrow depth of field so they kind of almost bokey out of it, um, they just become an abstract shape in the background, which isn't is no longer conflicting with the subject, and maybe even is adding a kind of atmosphere to the shot. So bright spots, bright colours, things like that are not desirable generally, but you can hopefully do something with them so that they're no longer a problem. Now, a classic one in wildlife is intersecting branches, foreground, background. Often the animal you're interested in is in a tree or in a bush, or you know, there's undergrowth, so there's loads of stuff between you and it, and then loads of stuff in the background as well. So there's actually a couple of things about this. One is I would say make sure you've got your focus point set up properly. So I always use use a single point to set my focus because a lot of my subjects often behind lots of grass or branches or whatever it might be. And I went through the learning process of getting lovely pictures, sharp in-focus pictures of grass branches, anything but the animal I was trying to capture. So I very quickly learned that lesson about how to set up my AF point correctly. Now, having done that, you've also got to be aware of what's in the frame, and you can't get rid of all of it. So I spoke last time about looking at where animals are likely to go. So if they're in an area that's got a very busy background, are they likely to move somewhere else that has a much cleaner background? So if they're on the move, they may not be. So you've just got to think about how you eliminate eliminate those distracting elements. It may be that you can reframe the image in a way to do that. It may be that, as I've said, you can put them out of focus using depth of field, but have a think about what you're doing. Now, the other element, the other distracting element I want to talk about is competing subjects. So I've already said that you could well have more than one point of interest in the frame. So the primary point of interest is your subject, and I've given you an example of where they're a couple. So these things happen, and you need to decide what the points of interest are when you're composing the frame, when you're composing the image. And this is again one of the things that separates really good photograph, uh, really good photographers from average photographers, they're thinking about what the points of interest are and how they work together. And the important thing about this is you really need to recognise pretty quickly whether all of those points of interest work together, or if you've got to start dropping some out because there's just too much in the frame. And that can be a real problem. Now, depending on what you're using, uh so if you're using if your the lens you're using, let's say, doesn't get in very close, and your only choice is to take a photograph with your subjects and a load of distracting stuff around it, always shoot raw, always shoot the biggest image that your camera will allow you to do. I know that might compromise how much how many images you can get on a memory card, but honestly, these days with the memory cards are available, just get a big one. And then at the end of each photography session, download the images onto a computer. I then put them onto solid state drives, two of them. So I've got an immediate backup, and then just wipe the cards you're using the camera to just where you can or if where it's appropriate, re just reinitialize the cards, start again. So I only ever use the SD card and the flash card I've got in my cameras. I only ever use them for acquisition. They once they're bought, they stay in the camera, I don't take them out again. And I and I do recommend that method of doing things. So I kind of went off subject topic a little bit, but shoot raw, shoot the biggest you can, and then if you've had to use a shorter focal length than you ideally would want to, you've always got the option of recropping when you go to post. So it gives you that possibility. So the key thing to remember about problem three, which is distracting elements, is that small distractions become major problems when the image lacks a dominant idea. So it's really important to have a clear subject and then work around that subject and make sure that everything else is working with the subject, and those other elements are helping to tell the story. So the next thing I want to talk about is why editing often makes things worse. So there are a few things that tend to happen in editing, one of them is excessive cropping, and I've already said, you know, cropping might be the only option you've got, but you do need to make sure you've got enough image left for it to be usable, and you really want to minimize the cropping that you have to do. You you want to think about the composition, get it as close as you can to the final version of the image, but minimize the cropping because what you do, you lose resolution, uh, you make it much harder to get a good quality image when you are doing a lot of cropping. The next thing is over sharpening. Uh, you really don't want to do that. Um, look, a little bit of sharpening is fine at the end of the editing process, but don't overdo it because you'll start getting um uh elements in the photograph that become distractions in themselves. You'll start getting edges that look wrong, it starts to look pretty horrible. So things like sharpening, keep them to an absolute minimum, contrast again, they need to look natural, but it's again very easy to overdo the contrast unless you're deliberately going for something abstract. If you know, by all means go for a deliberate high contrast, a deliberate dramatic contrast. But if you're if you're not going for that, then just keep all of your changes, all of your editing, keep the changes small, do the minimum that you need to do in order to get the results. So I spoke about editing changing the contrast just to bring out your subject, and there will be a point where it kind of pops out of the back. That's it, leave it there, don't carry on. Um, another one is saturation. So some people think a photograph isn't correctly colour balanced unless your eyes are watering as they look at these amazing colours that come out and grab you by the lapels and slap you around a bit. So don't do that. Um the the measure I always use because I'm wildlife, so a lot of the time there's grass around. I just use the saturation so that the grass looks a natural colour. And often where I'm working, uh I might have grass around, or it might be leaves nearby. So I'm just trying to get that green to look as close as what I'm looking at now when I'm doing the editing, and that gives me a yardstick that I can measure my saturation against. So I'm not a fan on oversaturating, I think it looks um it looks unnatural. I'm I want to make a connection with the animal, I want to bring out uh elements and aspects. So I was trying to make that one word, but elements and aspects of the animal that bring it out. So, for example, scales on um an Eastern Valley water dragon uh that I photographed in Sydney a little while ago now, and I and I did push the saturation up a little bit because I just wanted to emphasize the colour and the scales a little bit, so just to bring them out and make them slightly more obvious. But it was to tell the story, really show people how beautiful these little lizards are because they're they're quite skittish, they'll run away from you if you get too close anyway, and often that's the first time you'll know they're there when they're running away. But if you get a moment to see them, that they actually are really, really pretty, I think. So that was the idea of that. So be just use small changes when you're editing, don't go crazy. So the main thing about editing is to just amplify the structure, make it as clear, you know, bring out subject, bring out the story, make use editing to help underline that connection. But editing doesn't create structure, so in other words, if you got something wrong, uh, like if your exposure was definitely way off, editing's not really going to fix that. As you fix one thing, you're gonna be putting something else out of wax, so you've then got to look at masking and all sorts of other stuff, which to be honest with you, I never get into. Um, I keep my editing very, very simple. Other people like to do a lot of editing, and that's what floats their boat. But I'm I really try and get as much as I can correct in the frame, even if I have to shoot something fast, and I know it's not quite ideally what I would like, it gets me in there. It I still establish that connection, I've still got an emotional connection with the image. So, where I'd like to suggest you go with this is when you're looking at your images, rather than sort of beating yourself up about all this stuff, just do a bit of diagnosis on it, just step back and be objective. So ask why the image almost works, and if you're not sure, just identify the strongest element. What is the subject? How well did that work? And where are the conflicts? Just look objectively, and sometimes it's helpful to have a checklist, the kind of thing I've just walked through in this podcast, to look at okay, if if I'm not sure what's wrong with it, let's go back to the list. Is it too much colour? Um, is it a really busy background? Um, am I not clearly focused on the subject? Is there too much stuff in the foreground? Whatever it might be, but just work through and identify where the conflicts are, and as you do that, you are learning what you need to look out for next time around. So, all of this is a process. Uh, I I was watching somebody, I've been watching quite a few videos actually lately, just to um see what people are talking about. And the the thing you have to remember is that most people who are really good at photography, they got really good by taking thousands of really awful photographs, but they learned from them. They sat down and went through at least some of them to work out what they were doing wrong, and then once you know what you've done wrong, you know what to change next time around so that you don't make that same mistake again. You might make a new one, but that's that's fine, that's all part of it. So that's what we've been um so that's really it for this podcast. So remember, we're looking at prevention rather than repair. Strong photographers diagnosed problems earlier, and editing, although it's definitely a part of the process, it's become it's it's a refinement, it's doing that final adjustment because particularly if you're shooting in raw, because raw images, if they look flat, you've done it right. But a raw image is not inspiring. If you want um, if you want to see something a bit more inspiring straight off the bat, uh and if you can, then save raw and JPEG because JPEGs look a bit nicer, but um, raws are going to look flat if you've done it right. So editing is part of the process, and it's where you then pull back in all the elements that make that photograph come alive and just pop out at you as a um uh you know, an event, a connection with this animal. So, having said all of that, the real challenge, of course, is noticing all of this while the scene is unfolding in front of you, and that's what I'm going to be talking about on Friday in episode four, um, which is coming up next week, and that's the final episode in this series of podcasts. So I hope you found that useful. As I've said, please remember to like and subscribe, uh, tell all your friends, um, and have a look at the website because I do have um webinars going on, at least as I'm recording this, short courses, all sorts of things. So if you do, if you are serious about improving your photography, uh please have a look and um hopefully there'll be something there that allows you to move forward and start feeling um excited about your photography. That's the ideal place to be. That's it from me. Bye for now.