Composition of Photos (1 Viewer)

Hello, I'm Herb Barnes. I'd like to suggest to most posters of bird photos that they crop too tightly. Think that a bird (even in a photo) needs breathing space and atmosphere. Many of the photos I have seen posted are awesome, but could be much improved by cropping with proper composition. Proper composition isn't an intuitive process. As a start, more space needs to be allowed to the face side of a photo.

When I was a fledgling photo student, one of my instructors (whom I thought at the time was dumb as a stump), claimed that 'seeing' was all. As far as I could see, 'seeing' was a cop out. 'Seeing', in retrospect is the ability to visualize the finished photograph when you snap the shutter. (This means that you are formatting a properly framed photograph of a bird; not just what a bird physically looks like!) And that, for photographers, 'seeing' is searching the world in a camera format. Most of us try to do that when we photograph birds. However, in photographing birds we find that the birds don't cooperate fully, so sometimes our 'seeing' has to follow the photograph into the cropping phase. With multi megapixel cameras, we can do that.

This instructor, Walter Allen at Ohio University in the 1960s admonished that to understand composition, one should go to museums and study the compositional tools of the masters. Note the compositional elements - the
'A', the twisted figure, etc. Damn, he was right! Maybe wasn't so dumb after all. What an insight!

Check my gallery to see if I practice what I preach......

Nice gallery Herb! I agree w/ your assessment - cropping is somewhat of an art in itself!

I agree in the main that folk probably crop too much. Having said that I do not think that you can blame people for it. Most folk who look at bird pictures in magazines and books will see pictures that have been cropped either by the photographer or the photo- editor. Their perception and expectation of what they think people want to see is guided by the way previous material has been treated.

I also think that with pictures on the web it may be the case that when viewing a thumbnail , a small bird image stands less of a chance of being opened up. Also, where the picture of the bird is very small, web pictures tend to look not so good owing to the limitation of physical size i.e. 800 pixel width.

With pictures on the forum other factors come into play. Bird photography is never going to be considered high art though some may not agree. Some pictures need to be large since they serve as illustrations and the 'rules of composition' are somewhat sacrificed.

You also make the presumption that every picture will look better with less crop and this has to be wrong. Many pictures are taken where the bird's environment is pretty unattractive or disturbing so cropping is the best course. I know the argument will be 'well photograph the bird in a different setting'. That may be true, but some folk may not be minded for that. Some have day jobs, go out with other birders and therefore cannot plan shots etc. For them photography is just another way of birding.

However I do agree that some crops are just simply too tight in my humble opinion.

Hi Herb,

I think there is something in what you say all right and many of the absolute stunners that you see are photographs that are not just technically perfect but well-composed etc as well.

However, you need to bear in mind that aesthetic beauty is not the only reason that people take photographs of birds - sometimes it's for maximum detail of features, id queries etc...

So, I don't disagree with your general point, but a pic doesn't need to be perfectly framed to fulfil the purposes of the photographer and hence a good'un...


All the best.... Ray

herb barnes said:

Hello, I'm Herb Barnes. I'd like to suggest to most posters of bird photos that they crop too tightly. Think that a bird (even in a photo) needs breathing space and atmosphere. Many of the photos I have seen posted are awesome, but could be much improved by cropping with proper composition. Proper composition isn't an intuitive process. As a start, more space needs to be allowed to the face side of a photo.......

Click to expand...

I'm not so sure.
Of course if it's an "improper" crop it's just done poorly by definition.
But has nothing, necessarily, to do with if a the picture was cropped or
not. A poor job is just a poor job.

Also you don't make a distinction between a tight crop and a close-up. A
close-up has the PURPOSE of concentrating on the detail of the bird to
the exclusion of other values and there is not anything necessarily wrong
with that it just depends upon what you are trying to accomplish.

To my taste the most common fault is that the birds are often sitting in
this rather austere environment where everything is neat and tidy and
not a branch is out of place. The over-all effect to my eyes is one of a
static, lifeless bird that is almost statuesque in appearance. There is
no there there. To my taste it's quite all right to have a few small
twigs obscuring the view of the bird if that bird is normally found in
deep brush for instance.

I think these show what I mean between a crop and a close-up.

SF

Point made.

thanks

Herb, I think you make a very valid point. 'Breathing' space in an image is very important. I also believe theres times when a tighter crop serves to give more detail on a subject. So a bit of variety is a good thing.

A good, final image, begins in the mind of the photographer, and before the shutter is activated!

You have a great gallery collection :t:

Sout Fork said:

I'm not so sure.
I think these show what I mean between a crop and a close-up.
SF

Click to expand...

I agree with that point.

Herb, as a relative newbie to DSLR I think one of our (newbie) aims is to show as much detail of the bird as possible and to do that we want to get in as close as possible. Once we get that out of our system we can start to concentrate on 'creating' good photographs. But you make a good point for us to take on board.

Matter of taste, of course. Just the same, I generally prefer not to crop too tight and leave a generous amount of breathing space. But no compositional rule is ever right 100% of the time, or even 70% of the time. Variety matters, as does suiting the crop to the bird, its pose, the environment it's in, your output format (you will usually want to crop tighter at 640 x 480 than you do at 1600 x 1200, tighter for a small 3 x 2 illustration than you do for a double page spread), the purpose of the shot (technical illustration, wallpaper, fine art, whatever), and just what you feel like doing at the time. Sometimes I crop tight just because I'm bored with putting space around birds.

But mostly I like to leave more space than most other people seem to do. As I said, it's a matter of taste, and there are no rules, only rough and ready guidelines.