The Art of Composition part 6

Thus far in this series of articles on composition, I have focused entirely on depth of field – why it matters in respect to composition and the various factors that dramatically impact it. While I think I have truly beaten this topic to death, I do think there is one last thing that needs to be discussed here and that is my perspective on aperture. 

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a treatise on what an aperture is and how it works. I’m pretty sure you already know this. Instead, I want to discuss functional apertures for wildlife photography and the psychological impact they have when looking at our compositions. 

Heady stuff? 

Maybe. 

But let’s begin with a story. . . 

For many years, my go to aperture setting was f/8. I wanted a balance. I wanted as much of my subject in focus while still creating an out-of-focus background in the composition. I wasn’t alone in this thought process. For mammal photography, f/8 has long been the gold standard – at least for portrait work. A moose with a big set of antlers that takes up at least ¼ or more of the frame? f/8. A frame filling photograph of a brown bear running through the water? f/8. 

The idea behind this strategy is rooted in the very real notion that depth of field becomes shallower as one gets closer to the subject – which you should all know by now if you have been following this series of articles. So, it’s important to note that this whole f/8 strategy was based on creating portraits - whether full body or head and shoulders. 

But the problem with this, for me at least, was that I always preferred the look and feel of extremely shallow depths of field and the subsequent bokeh that it created in my compositions. There was something magical about these photographs. Something ethereal. Something that seemed to take root in my imagination.

At some point, it dawned on me that I was making huge assumptions in my photography by opting to use smaller apertures like f/8 for so much of my wildlife work. I assumed I needed more depth of field. I assumed this was the “right way” to photograph these situations. Almost every wildlife photographer I knew who worked with big animal did the same thing. It was in all the forums (this was pre-Facebook days). You could find it in the pages of every book that even hinted at wildlife photography techniques. Colleagues did it. Photographers I looked up to did it. And so, I too went about my life blissfully following other people’s artistic assumptions. 

Understand that I was making a fulltime living with my wildlife photography at this point, raising a family, paying all the bills, etc. So, the images obviously sold. The concept worked. I was able to justify my habits without ever having to truly consider them. 

But as artists, as responsible humans, we should always find the time to occasionally challenge and rip apart all our assumptions and preconceived notions, our belief systems, our paradigms, our world views, and see if we still believe these things or if we are just coasting through life out of habit. 

And so, that’s what I did. 

One cold and dark and miserable winter night, I set pouring through a decade worth of photographs in my library sizing up my body of work and trying to decide what I liked, what I hated, how I could improve upon it. Through this process, the concept of depth of field once again arose and I had to challenge myself on this. 

Above all else, I am an artist. As an artist, what I do should always be an extension of my own creative expression, my own artistic vision. If I like something, if it works for me, if I find myself captivated by the look and feel of a style or technique, then regardless of what the “old guard” of wildlife photography says, it’s absolutely right for me. 

That’s the beauty of art, right? Even though we like to weld the word “rule” onto artistic concepts – such as the rule of thirds or the rule of odds – the reality of the situation is that THERE ARE NO rules. 

Art is nothing if not subjective. 

Concepts like the rule of thirds “work” in some situations, but to call them a rule is to suggests an adherence to them is as important as the rule of law. This just isn’t true. There are countless reasons that the “rule of thirds” can be a terrible compositional strategy – which I will go into great depth further along in this series. 

So, if I fully believed that there was no such thing as rules in art, then why did I cling so tightly to this notion that more depth of field in wildlife portraits was important? 

Inevitably, all of this led me to do what I do and fall down the rabbit hole of trying to understand why shallower depths of field appealed to me so much. Little did I know, this would send me chasing down concepts rooted in both physiology and psychology. 

You likely know that our eye’s pupil functions like the aperture of our lenses, getting larger to let in more light or smaller to let in less. But did you know we can measure this in f/stops just like a camera’s aperture? 

In essence, your eye has a variable aperture that ranges from the equivalent of f/2.1 to f/8. That’s not a typo. The widest aperture of the pupil corresponds to what f/2.1 would be for a camera lens – if camera lenses had f/2.1. Under normal circumstances, our eye’s pupil varies between f/2.1 when the light is low and f/8 when the light is bright. And with these f/stop equivalents, comes the very same depth of field we would expect from a camera’s lens. 

Understanding this basic fact inevitably brings me to wonder about what we perceive to be realistic, or unrealistic with our photographs. If our minds evolved in tandem with our eyes to perceive and experience the world through a very narrow set of parameters, how does our camera setting choices potentially affect that? 

Let’s look at landscape photography for a moment. In this genre of photography, it’s common to use extremely small apertures such as f/22 to create a sweeping depth of field. This is far outside the boundaries of what our eyes are capable of seeing and maybe even outside the boundaries of what our brains are capable of appreciating. But even though our eyes will never see the world this way, with all that in-focus detail associated with such a large depth of field, for landscape photography it’s okay. 

Why?

Because it emulates how we EXPERIENCE a landscape. 

Let me explain. 

Imagine you are in Grand Teton National Park during the springtime. Before you is a breathtaking vista of large golden flowers knows as mules ear, the Snake River, and the mountains beyond. In an earlier installment of this series, I explained how that there is only ever one spot in our vision that is ever actually in focus – just like our cameras. Standing before this scene, we look first at the flowers, then shift our attention to the river, and on to the cathedral peaks of the Tetons. At no point do we consume the whole scene at once. While we might be aware of the many parts, we can only focus on one part at time. So, we shift focus from flower to river to mountains as we scan the scene. And with a landscape photograph, our eyes work the same way – shifting from flower to mountains as we take it all in. 

Using an aperture of f/22, to maximize the depth of field, thus allows the viewer to experience a landscape composition much the same way as they would the real thing. The eye moves from flower to river to mountains, taking in one part at a time, scanning the composition as it goes. 

Take a moment to notice how you naturally look at a landscape photograph. It’s not much different from how you are reading this article – one small piece at a time.

But wildlife is different.

The experience of seeing an animal in the wild is not like the experience of looking at a beautiful mountain landscape. 

Like it or not, you are a mammal – unless you are an AI bot sent by Google. For the sake of this article, however, let us assume no one reading this falls into the artificial intelligence category and therefore all of us crawled out of the same primordial soup that all other species of mammals, and technically life in general, came from. As such, our bodies and minds all evolved for survival. 

Back when loincloths were high fashion, the sudden appearance of another animal demanded every ounce of attention and focus we could conjure up. Even today, let’s say you have moved beyond looking at the beautiful landscape and decide to step into it by hiking down a trail. Suddenly, a bear appears on that trail in front of you. And in that moment, nothing else on this planet exists except for you and that bear. There’s no to-do list running through your head. Any thoughts about the lingering fight between you and your partner instantly disappears. Frustrations with work are gone. Anxieties about the future and sadness about the past is erased from your thoughts at the speed of neurons firing. There is only you and a bear. 

Now substitute something more benign, like a young deer, in place of the bear. Your response is the same. Your mind clears. Your focus sharpens. The physiological response is identical. 

Whether food or foe, becoming distracted in these moments has always meant the very real possibility of either going hungry or satisfying someone else’s hunger. 

Hungry bellies drive much about our physiology and evolution. 

Regardless of predator or prey, our bodies dump adrenaline into our systems – the fight or flight hormone – in these moments. When this occurs, our pupils dilate in response. Dilation means the pupils get bigger. Bigger pupils mean bigger apertures. Bigger apertures mean shallower depths of field. Shallower depths of field mean more intense visual acuity and sharper focus on the thing at hand. Thus, we have evolved to go into what I like to call f/2.1 mode in these situations.

For me, this was a revelation. 

A big animal taking up a part of our field of view is not an f/8 moment for us. This is not a situation in which our brains want to also focus in on the “happy little trees” of a Bob Ross painting. Instead, we have evolved to automatically open the aperture and go into f/2.1 mode for the purpose of survival. 

So how does all this relate to wildlife photography? 

If we have evolved in such a way to narrow down our focus and depth of field when confronted by potential food or foe, then photographing with the shallowest of depths of field mimics our innate physiological response to the same situation in the wild. And this invokes the same psychological experience that occurs along with it. 

Realizing this changed the way I approached my art.

How we experience the natural world is a fundamental component of art. Whether we choose to emulate that experience or defy reality, is up to the artist. But make no mistake, the decision should be carefully considered. 

We are all mammals. We have more in common with black bears and red foxes than differences. The way we see the world, how we experience gut instincts about it, how we engage with it, how we respond to it – be it the real or the manufactured version of the world around us – all comes back down to our own basic biology. When a car suddenly slams on the breaks in front of you, your mind and body respond exactly as it would if that had been a leopard leaping out in front of you. 

I prioritize shooting with wide open apertures and harp on things like depth of field and bokeh for this reason. I do what it takes to get closer and make my depth of field as shallow as possible. I attempt to find separation between subject and background to help our eyes focus in on whatever it is I want you to focus in on. And the point of all this for me is to recreate how we experience the natural world on a psychological level because I want people to connect, relate, and find mystery and magic in it.