Wildlife Photography Composition Tips: A Field Guide

Most people get a good animal in frame and call it done. Fair enough, wildlife is hard enough to find and photograph without also worrying about where you put it in the picture. But composition is the difference between "I saw a bear" and a photo people actually stop scrolling for. Let's go over a few things I actually think about when I'm lining up a shot.

Give the animal somewhere to look.

This is a big one for me! I always like to tell people "Give your subject room to look into the frame." If your subject is looking left, don't center it or crop it tight on the right side of the frame. Leave room in the direction it's facing. It sounds like a small thing but it isn't. An animal staring into the edge of the frame with nowhere to go makes people uncomfortable in a way they can't always explain. Give it space to look into and the photo breathes.

Get down to eye level when you can.

Most wildlife shots are taken by a human standing up, pointing a lens down at something on the ground. That's the view we already see every day. Get down low, shoot at the animal's eye level, and suddenly you're not looking at a squirrel, you're looking the squirrel in the eye. It's a completely different photo, and it costs you nothing but a dirty knee.

The background should not be an afterthought.

This is easy to miss! We can easily get tunnel vision when we come across that critter we've always hoped to photograph. So, I see this a lot. Beautiful subject, perfectly sharp, and then there's a trash can or a some other distraction doing its best to ruin everything behind it. Before you press the shutter, actually look at what's behind your subject. Move your feet a few steps if you need to. A clean, simple background does more for your photo than almost any setting on your camera.

Behavior beats a portrait.

A sharp, well lit animal standing there looking at you is fine. An animal doing something, hunting, feeding, calling, fighting, mid stride, tells a story. If you have the choice between firing off the "perfect portrait" frame and waiting another ten minutes for the animal to actually do something, wait. The behavior shot is almost always the better photo.

Crop in camera, not just in Lightroom.

It's tempting to just "get the shot" and fix composition later. Sometimes you have to, wildlife does not wait around for you to reframe. But get in the habit of actually composing while you're shooting instead of relying on the crop tool to save you. You'll lose resolution, and more importantly, you'll lose the habit of seeing a good composition in the field, which is the actual skill you're trying to build.

Hopefully some of this saves you a few bad frames out there. Keep these wildlife photography composition basics in your back pocket and go get muddy knees.