Presenting your images for the viewer

The most important note with this blog post is that if you are happy to just take snaps for yourself and show them to friends and family, this blog post of ours will not really matter to you. If you, however, are interested in becoming a more skilled wildlife photographer, then we urge you to read on.

When it comes to presenting your images, there are a number of things to consider. It’s all to do with simple aesthetics. Once you get more experienced with the photography of birds or other wildlife, the ideas of how to position the subject within the frame during capture and how to present it to the viewer later, will come naturally. Believe me, it takes a bit of time, though not forever. For Netra and I, having spent tens of thousands of hours photographing many different subjects, this part of the process has become easier. But it’s still not without challenges at times.

When I first started photographing birds seriously back in 2003, I was inexperienced in many ways and it was 13 years later that I would meet Netra and the journey of 2Mad Photographers would begin.

The fact that I was shooting slide film with very low-end lenses and cameras was of no real help. Practicing was money and time consuming and the learning was much slower. Digital technology made the job much easier. Not easy, but far more manageable.

Even before I started my serious journey with bird photography, I knew that one day I want to shoot with a 500mm f/4 or 600mm f/4 prime lens, as those photographers, whose work I admired back then – and still do today. They were all using those big super telephoto beasts. The technology has come a long way, of course, but the principles in my experience have not changed. The majority of wild birds will require very long focal lengths to capture them successfully in great detail. However, having big, long lenses is no panacea to poor technique with the camera, or the capture, or the final presentation. The image begins long before the shutter button is pressed.

Anticipating the angle of view, the angle at which the subject is positioned relative to me, the size of the subject in the frame, the various elements in the frame. All these things add or detract from a good image. The process of thinking about them takes merely a few seconds after decades of practice. But it’s worth it in the long run.

I’ll focus on three simple concepts in this blog post.

• Viewing angle of the photographer towards the subject,
• Angle of the subject in the frame, which relates to the previous point,
• Positioning the subject with enough space in the right area within the frame.

VIEWING ANGLE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER TOWARDS THE SUBJECT

This is my number one concern to be honest. I have learned a long, long time ago, that the most aesthetically pleasing images are when these things occur:

• The subject’s face is angled slightly towards the viewer and good eye contact is made. For more information on why head angle matters, you should read our blog post by clicking right here.
• The subject’s body is positioned in a way that it is either facing the viewer or is at an angle towards the viewer, not away from the viewer. This is important for say, flight photography images, and this is my personal golden rule. Once the subject is angled towards the photographer, the head angle mostly follows in an ideal position. But not always!
• The subject is ideally as close to the photographer’s eye level as possible. Looking up the bum of a subject as it sits on a branch, or as it flies by does little for creating aesthetically pleasing images. The same applies for flight images. Unless I am photographing a species for ID, I will generally not shoot pointing up at the ventral view of a bird flying by, as it just does not look good.

POSITIONING THE SUBJECT

This is a simple concept really. The subject should be presented in a way that there is enough room around it, in front, or behind, or above. Nothing is more unpleasant than seeing a flying bird or a perched bird so off center, close to the edge where it’s looking or flying. See the below examples for your learning. When we take flight shots, we like to leave a little bit of room around the birds so we can crop in a way that is most aesthetically pleasing. See below examples of bad and good crops for final presentation.

I’ll present two examples of a perched bird below with the same space in front principle.

Hopefully, you were able to get a few tips on how to position your subject in the frame. Whether it’s a bird, a spider, a mammal or whatever, it works! Position and angle of view are so important to elevate your photography to the next level.

Take care and happy shooting!