The Art of Composition part 10

In the last article from this series, I discussed the logical reasons for getting eyelevel with our subjects. While there are some heady considerations behind this, changing our angle of view to this level often helps to divide up the picture space into three dimensions – foreground, middle ground, and background. Not only does this help to create a more dynamic composition, it also helps us to separate our subject from the environment.

While the impact this has on our composition is profound, this is also very straight forward stuff. As I mentioned in that article, leveling your camera eye-to-eye with your subject is simply the default position we should all start at. But understand, this is just a starting place. It’s not necessarily where we always want to end up.

When discussing angle of view in wildlife photography, keep in mind that all these concepts are applied in other genres of photography as well. This isn’t just about wildlife. It’s about connecting with our subjects. And when we distill things down, when we look past the fact that we are photographing bears or wild horses or eagles or owls or whatever, what sits below the surface is the basics of portrait photography.

Quite literally every photograph we create of wildlife is a portrait. Some might be run-of-the-mill head and shoulders portraits. Some might be full body. Others might be environmental portraits. It doesn’t matter how we want to classify it in our own genera of photography. At the end of the day, it’s all still portrait work.

When we recognize the implications of this, we can transcend the shiny veneer of our subjects being bighorn sheep or moose and start drawing from the same tried and true playbooks of all other portrait photographers. This is important to understand because we really don’t need to reinvent the wheel here.

All of this brings me to the concept I want to discuss: low angle views.

When we think of the first US President, George Washington, one of the first “qualities” that is often attributed to him is his height. From biographies to blog posts, everyone feels the need to mention the fact that he was over 6’ tall (technically he was the same height as me, 6’3”). During the Revolutionary Era, the average “American” male was 5’8” inches tall. This made George Washington stand some 7 inches taller than most people (the average today is 5’9”). English men at this time, however, averaged 5’4” inches in height. This meant Washington was nearly a foot taller than your average Red Coat. And it was Washington’s height and stature that is often said to have made him a natural leader in the eyes of those who followed him to war.

We put a lot of weight on height. Think of the various phrases we use such as “stand tall” or “look up to.” Well tell people who are acting immature to “grow up.” We say that great people in history were “giants among men” or they were a “towering genius.” Big guys are often said to be “large and in charge.” People have “big personalities” and can be “larger than life.” Thomas Carlyle once wrote that, “The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.”

Now juxtapose that with Napoleon. Let someone of shorter stature have great ambition or leadership skills and they suddenly have “Napoleonic complex.” Short men who drive big trucks are said to be compensating for something. In 2004, the Journal of Applied Psychology published a report showing there was a direct correlation between height and success in the workplace for men. The Journal of Political Economy published that there was a 1.8% increase in wages for every additional inch of height in men.

All of this is to say that there is A LOT of psychology wrapped up in how we perceive and think about and view height and size – right or wrong. As visual artists, we should take note of such things.

Such facts were not lost to those artists who came before us. Think of John Singer Sargant’s 1903 portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was 5’10”, making him only about an inch over average. But there was nothing average about Roosevelt, and you would never intone the true nature of his physical stature from Sargant’s portrait of him. In this painting, Roosevelt “stands tall.” His right hand grips the finial of a staircase. His left is placed casually in a pocket but with elbow in a regal pose. And Theodore Roosevelt is depicted with a commanding presence, looking down on the viewer.

This is art in a nutshell.

Reality matters, of course. But only so much.

More important than reality is how we ourselves feel about the subject, how we want people to experience what we are portraying. Reality is subjective. What is scary and imposing for one person is fun and exciting for another. Emotion is everything, even if it’s subtle. Art guides people’s understanding and experience of the world. Theodore Roosevelt (he hated to be called Teddy) was larger than life. For this reason, John Singer Sargant wanted to portray who the president really was on the inside, the man Sargant saw when he looked at Roosevelt.

So, my question for you is this: what are you communicating about your subjects?

When we stand 6’3” tall with our tripods fully extended and lenses looking down at an egret, fox, bear, jackal, etc., what are we telling the world about our subject?

Alternatively, when we take the opportunity to get lower than eye level, and look up at our subject, what are we communicating?

The result here is anything but subtle.

If art is inextricable from psychology, then our angle of view may very well be the most important decisions we make as photographers.

Interestingly, photographers and non-photographers alike make decisions like this when creating “selfies,” depending upon the intended audience and how they wish to appear.

In a study on the psychology of self-portraits, Anastasia Makhanova, of the University of Florida, tested a hypothesis that people unconsciously manipulated the angle of how they photographed themselves based on the impression they wanted particular groups of people to have of them. This study has been widely cited and discussed at length across all genres of photography, except for wildlife photography. That is, until now.

What this study found is worth mentioning here because there are lessons to be learned from how camera angle impacts the impressions we have of the subject we are looking at. Naturally, the study found that there is a fundamental difference in how males and females take photos of themselves based on the intended audience. But the reasons they did so give us a deeper insight into how we can manipulate camera angles in wildlife photographer for similar reasons.

For instance, males take selfies from a low angle when their intended audience are other men. This makes them look taller and more dominant. But when creating a selfie for women to see, they do so at eye-level in order to show qualities such as approachability and supportiveness. Females on the other hand take selfies from a high angle, shooting down at themselves, when their intended audience are males, to give the impression of being smaller, younger, and more submissive. But just like males, when women take selfies intended for other women, they do so at eye-level for the same reasons that men do: in order to make them seem more approachable.

All of this is happening on an unconscious level, of course. We understand the impact that camera angle has on how someone else looks at us. Whether they are looking up, at eye-level, or down at us, the angle of view has a dramatic impact on how we are perceived. And the same applies to wildlife photography.

So, when I first began discussing angle of view, I talked about how our starting point should always be eye-level with our subjects. I used words like connection and intimacy, and analogies like “seeing eye-to-eye.” As wildlife photographers, a big part of our job is helping other people enter into the world of the animals we photograph. Comparing this to the psychological study I mention above, in which both men and women take selfies at eye-level when they want others to see them as approachable, we can see how using the same technique with wildlife has similar psychological consequences. Likewise, when we take a lower angle of view and photograph up toward and animal, just like how men take selfies when other men are the ones who will see those photographs, we do so to make the subject look bigger and more dominant.

So, ask yourself, how do you want your subject to be seen?

When we are photographing powerful animals such as bears, wolves, lions, or jaguars, do you want to compose your photograph in such away as to make them seem approachable or would you prefer to make them dominant and powerful?

You wield the power to shape how people perceive these animals with your photographs. You need only intentionally compose your photographs in such a way as to control that impression.

In the photograph of the bear, the power that is imbued in the subject has more to do with the way in which I composed the photograph from a low angle than the subjects herself. I was in the water with my lens only inches above the surface looking up at this bear as she stepped over the fallen log, looking down at me. Imagine how different this photograph would be if I had been standing up, taller than her, with my camera angled down toward her as she walked along this bank. All of the power, all of the impact here is hinged upon nothing more than the angle of view.