5 Tips To Improve Your Nature Photography Composition!

Okay, so here we go. 5 tips on how to improve your photography composition. Hello. Today we are going to talk about 5 photography tips to help improve your composition on your photography. And we're filming this out at Caddo Lake in Texas, and this particular spot that we're at is in a National Wildlife Refuge, and it is an area where they used to do TNT production. There'll be a picture of the sign that tells you all about it at the end of this little segment. But anyways, our 5 tips are going to be how to improve your photography composition. There's really no hard and fast rules on photography composition, but we'll call these 5 rules of photography composition to kind of lead you in the right direction to help get your viewers— to draw your viewers' attention into your photography. So anyhow, stay tuned and we are going to discuss them.

But first, here's the sign.

So today, number one is If you hear people say Polo in the background, it's because I have two other people that are with me are lost. So we're playing Marco Polo so they can find their way back to me. Anyhow, so of the five tips, number one is the rule of thirds. And the reason we're going to discuss rule of thirds is because it is the easiest one to explain. It is all about a tic-tac-toe pattern that you go by. To place your images, your— not your images, but your subjects at each of the intersecting corners of the tic-tac-toe pattern or along one of the lines. Another thing you want to keep in mind is that we read from left to right, so whenever possible, place your subject on the left-hand side looking into your frame, but don't put them so close to the edge of the frame so that they feel like they're like suffocated. You want to them room to breathe. So here's a few sample images, and then we're gonna move to a new location for tip number 2.

So here is the grid for rule of thirds. If you notice on the left-hand side, you got 2 lines that intersect, and same on the right side. That's the goal, is to get your subject on those lines. And you want to make sure that you give your subject plenty of room to breathe, whether they're on the right side or the left side of the image. If you're doing landscape, the horizon is a good spot to either put on your upper or lower line, as you'll see from the following images. Now let's take a look at a couple images and see how well I did. So as you can see from this image here, I didn't do a very good job of cropping him. I didn't leave him enough room to breathe. Although he's still placed on the thirds, he just doesn't have any room on the right-hand side to breathe or look or anything like that. So the image, it just, it feels off. It just Doesn't feel balanced. So this image here, as you can see, the bison are on the right-hand side of the image and going into the left, which isn't the way I prefer it. I prefer my animals on the left and coming into the image towards the right. But they are based, or they are placed on that lower line on the thirds. The mountains are on the top, but the, the horizontal lines, there's really nothing that intersects with them other than the wooden fence. So this image is an okay image. It's not really one of my better landscapes, but I figured it would be a good example for this. So this little badger right here, she was a busy little mama. She was out hunting and she actually caught a little ground squirrel and was bringing it back to the den for the baby. As you can see, she is on the left-hand side of the image and she is coming at us, and there's plenty of room on the right-hand side. for her to come in and go to her den, which is in that very far low corner on the right side. So this one here is a perfect rule of thirds image.

And on your rule of thirds, on your camera, you can also have the display grid up, and I still to this day use that display grid. It helps me be a constant reminder of the rule of thirds and also help you keep your horizon line straight. That's one thing that just drives me crazy is when I look through my images and I see one of my horizons that's off. All right, so off to rule number 2. Okay, so step number 2 or rule number 2 is leading lines. Leading lines are good because our eyes are naturally drawn to lines and shapes. They love them. And as you notice from this video, my lines are coming in at a 45-degree angle and they're coming right to the subject, which is me. That's what you want to achieve when you're trying to use leading lines. Your leading lines don't necessarily have to be obvious lines. They can be implied. They can be a riverbed that kind of meanders through your image and takes you to your subject. Maybe a person, an animal, or a mountain. Or it can be a lakeshore that does the same thing. Or it can also be like shapes in animals, like their antlers, like their triangles and stuff where they all come together. And then the 45-degree angles that, like when they lean back and their antlers kind of 45-degree their back, it draws the viewer into your subject, which is your animal in that case, which is an implied leading line. Whereas this leading line here is a direct leading line. It's an object that is leading you to your subject. So anyways, here's a few more images that we can review, and then we're gonna move to another step for step 3.

So here we've got some leading lines going on on this image. We got a creek that's coming in from the right-hand side, and then we also got this little wooden trough thing that's going from left to right or right to left. But the main leading line is these ferns here, and the main fern is pointing you out of the film or out of the picture. So this here is not a very good image because it points out of the picture, so it's turning your viewers away from the image, leading them right on out. So this image here, this one is a little creek that is actually in Alaska. The leading lines in this is the creek that comes in from the right-hand side and kind of meanders down and around and then takes you right on down through the trees and to the mountain and to the sky. So that there is a perfect leading line. It's leading you into the subject. And not letting your viewers leave the subject until they've reached the— I'm sorry, not letting your viewer leave the image until the subject has been seen. So this here is an implied leading line. As you can see, it's a street line going right down the middle of the street and leading you to the mountains. So this image here is a perfect leading line. The line is the yellow line in the road leading you right to the subject, which is the mountains. So it's taking the viewer in and down the road to your mountain. So standing in the middle of the road is not something I recommend at all. Unless you have a friend, a close friend, to watch your back in the event that somebody decides to drive down that road. You don't want to be in the middle of it. Okay, so here is an implied leading line that I was talking about earlier with the antlers on the animals. This here is an elk, and if you notice all of the angles and shapes that are within his antlers that kind of draw your attention towards the antlers. So your leading lines in this image is the antlers and also the grass below. It kind of points up out of the bottom of the frame and up to the animal. But it's always nice too to go ahead and put an eyeball on the rule of thirds if at all possible. But they're such large animals And to give them room in their image, or in your image, to breathe. Sometimes it's a little difficult, but the leading lines on the antlers and the grass kind of help lead your viewer to the subject. At least that's kind of my thoughts on the whole antler thing. I don't know what your thoughts are, but leave them below in the comments. Let me know if you think the same way.

Okay, so tip number 3 is to isolate your subject from the background because you don't want to have this clutter showing up in your images because then you're going to be drawing away from your subject. So to do that, you want your subject to step away from the background, drop your f-stop down to say f/2.8, f/4, and f/5.6. You can get away with it as long as you have enough distance between you, your subject, and the background. So we're out here at Caddo Lake and we're doing some senior portraits for my granddaughter, and here's a few sample images how I got the background to blur out, and along with a few other sample images on how to get a nice creamy background.

So here we have a little immature Scarlet Tanager, and this one you can see that I've separated the bird from the background. But not only that, but I have leading lines This stick coming out of the top right-hand corner that's leading you right to the bird. So this particular image has separating the image, the subject from the background. We got some leading lines. I didn't really place it on the rule of thirds, but that's alright. I broke the thirds again. This particular image was taken with the 600mm lens at f/4, so that's why I ended up with such a creamy background. So this image here is of a cheetah, and she came up and stood right in front of us on the termite mound. This was taken with my 100-400 at 400mm Vertical, and that is full frame, and the f-stop was 5.6, and that is probably why we don't have a very good separation of the animal to the background. So this is just kind of an image that I've just saved over the years, um, from when we went to Africa because it was such a memorable experience, that cheetah so close to us. The sticks here in the front, the twigs, are kind of distracting too from the cheetah, seeing how it's a line and a, and a shape. It draws your eye to that instead of the actual cat itself. So here is one of the senior portraits that I took while we were out there at Caddo Lake. This one here has kind of a leading line going right to her. Had her sit on a stump, a tree stump, and the background behind her is actually pretty well blurred out. Took the image at f/2.8. Otherwise, that background would have been very distracting because there was a lot of trees and twigs and branches and whatnot right behind her.

Alright, tip number 4 is to move around so you can get a different perspective and get things out of your background like porta-potties. And to do that, you can get down low, lay down on the ground, which I have done numerous times to get a nice low perspective. I'll show you a few images after this segment. You also get down on your knee, get down on your butt. Another thing is also if you have a high tripod, you can go up high and you can tilt your screen down a little so you can see. So you can kind of get a different perspective going up. But anyways, change it up. Your feet aren't in concrete when you're out taking pictures. So move around, get different pictures. Here's some images. Let's review them.

So here's an image of a grizzly. I was laying on the ground shooting up at her, which makes her look a lot more intimidating than if I would have been shooting down on her. Number one, I probably never would have got her eyes in the image or that razor clam. That's in her mouth. In this other image here, I was kneeling down looking at her, and that's another good perspective. Basically, we were eye level with each other, which also makes her look a lot more intimidating than looking down on her. So once you go with a low perspective You're probably never going to want to stand up again taking photographs, especially of bears and large animals. It just really gives you a really nice perspective, makes them look a lot more intimidating.

Okay, so we are on tip number 5, and that is to check all of your corners and your objects, your subjects, to make sure they don't have any weird things coming out of their head or weird things coming out of the corner of your frames or each side or top. Because you don't want that because it draws away from your subject. As you can tell, I have a weird pole coming out of my head. Alright, so there's your 5 tips. Take them to the bank. Go out to the mountains, the lakes, the rivers, the streets, wherever you photograph, and go take 5 images. I want 5 different images. I want 1 showing the rule of thirds, 2 showing leading lines, and 3 showing a nice creamy background. 4 I want one where you're breaking the rule of thirds. That's right, I said breaking the rule of thirds. And the 5th image, I don't know, take them and combine them all together and surprise me. Give me a really good image and post those in the Facebook group by November 30th. And December 15th, I will announce the winner. For the $25 gift card. So go to Facebook, go to the group, it's listed, listed below. Don't forget to like and subscribe and ring my bell so you will get notified the next time I post a video.