Wildlife Photography_ From Snapshots to Great Shots - Laurie Excell [39]
Figure 7.8 Getting down low so that I was at eye level with the Snowy Plover enhanced its reflection in the water.
On the other hand, capturing a bird in flight requires tilting your camera and your head towards the skies to capture the graceful soaring of a Snail Kite in flight (Figure 7.9) as it hunts for snails. Turning your camera skyward provides a different perspective that works well with birds in flight but can result in exposure issues. A bird’s underwings can become underexposed and dark against a bright sky. Dialing in plus exposure compensation against a bright sky will brighten the image so you can see the feather detail in the bird’s wings.
Figure 7.9 Aiming upward at a Snail Kite provides a sense of height as it flies by.
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Tip
Don’t just shoot from your standing height. Get low, get high, look up, look down, and move around to find the best perspective for your subject and what you want your images to convey.
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Concealing to Draw Attention
It is often said that what you conceal is just as important as what you reveal within an image. Using shadow and light is a good way to reveal what you want your viewers to see and conceal the rest within the shadows. The coastal brown bear in Figure 7.10 was feeding on a moose carcass that had washed up. He was in the recess of a rock, and bright light was hitting the rock face—a real exposure nightmare. I dialed in minus exposure compensation to darken the rock face, throwing all but the bear’s face into shadow and hiding the gore of the dead moose. The image draws viewers’ attention to the bear’s face. Concealing most of the bear adds a certain drama and mystery to the image.
Figure 7.10 Underexposing the image hides all but the bear’s face as it emerges from a rocky recess.
Frame Filling vs. Environmental Shots
The lens you select determines your photographic style (Chapter 2, “Camera Settings and Shooting Techniques”). Do you select a mid-range wide to telephoto lens when photographing wildlife to include the environment, or do you pull out your biggest gun to photograph a frame-filling face? Each image tells its own story. It’s up to you to decide which story is most interesting to you and your viewers. An environmental portrait of a herd of bison milling around the thermals of Old Faithful (Figure 7.11) using a mid-range zoom lens to include the background and a smaller aperture for increased depth of field provides your viewers with more information about the location where the image was made and your subjects’ habitat. Environmental portraits are storytelling compositions.
Figure 7.11 Bison use the heat of the thermals for warmth and to find exposed grasses to eat.
For a more intimate composition, try filling the frame with your subject. You can create frame-filling images by moving in closer to your subject (Chapter 6, “Close Encounters”) or by increasing the image size with a telephoto lens (Figure 7.12). Background distractions are minimized, keeping all of your attention on the subject.
Figure 7.12 Frame-filling compositions eliminate distracting elements from the background.
Moving in tighter on your subject for an in-your-face shot provides greater detail and more information about the subject. The proximity of your subject connects with you on a more intense level in an eye-to-eye composition (Figure 7.13).
Figure 7.13 The diagonal line from the bison’s nose to its eye draws the viewer through the frame to lock onto the intense stare.
Incorporating Background
Including more background in an image adds a sense of place to the story. With the subject smaller in the frame and a closed-down aperture for increased depth of field, the background appears sharper and more detailed. A whale fluke by itself is a dramatic image, but by zooming back to include more of the environment, you give your viewers clues to the location, which is part of the storytelling element of image making (Figure 7.14).
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