The Art of Composition part 8

I’m going to do something bold here and say there is a right and a wrong way of doing something. 

Ready? 

When it comes to photographing wildlife, there is a default point of view that we should all begin with. 

In just about everything I have ever written on wildlife photography I have claimed that there are no hard rules, that everything is subjective, that it’s all about your personal artistic vision. Yet here I am saying, “do this.” 

Hypocritical? 

I don’t think so. 

This is a starting point. The creativity, the subjectivity, the artistry of it all is what you decide to do from there. 

And that starting point of view is quite simple: we begin with our lens eyelevel with our subjects. 

After a decade and a half of leading wildlife photography workshops, I believe some explanation of what this really means is in order. This statement about being eyelevel with our subjects seems straightforward enough. But watching people photograph and then justify their angle of view as being eyelevel suggests to me that maybe more is needed here. 

So, let’s be clear. 

Eye-level doesn’t mean standing on a boardwalk above a marsh and photographing down at a great egret. Eyelevel doesn’t mean standing on the ground and photographing up into the trees at a bird in the overstory. Eyelevel doesn’t mean sitting in your vehicle photographing out the window at a fox in a field. Eyelevel doesn’t mean seeing the eyes of your subject or getting them in focus. Eyelevel means the camera is level with the eyes, at the same height, on the same horizontal plane. It’s quite literal. There is nothing subjective about this. 

You can raise the height of your camera to look down at the subject. You can lower your camera to look up at your subject. There is a time and a place for both. However, the starting point for wildlife photography is ALWAYS eye-level. 

Why?

Humans are a tall species. Even the shortest of us still tend to march around Planet Earth looking down our noses at most other lifeforms – both literally and figuratively. But when we discuss connecting with another person, understanding another person, we use phrases such as “seeing eye to eye.” 

Seeing eye to eye with another person means that we have transcended our own perspective and met someone where they are through some measure of empathy. 

Empathy. It’s a sticky word in our culture these days. It’s been coopted and dragged out of the context of its actual meaning. Yet there is nothing heady about this, nothing New Age. Unless you have sociopathic tendencies, you survive in this world on a day-to-day basis through the use of empathy. 

Psychology Today defines empathy as “the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal or fictional character.” It goes on to explain that empathy is “crucial for establishing relationships” and that it “involves experiencing another’s point of view.” 

Let me do what I do here and put this in terms of biology. 

Every animal that cares for their young, be it an American alligator, a black capped chickadee, a brown bear, or a human, does so through the use of empathy. A crying baby of the above species says many things to the adults of the same. Is the baby in pain, hungry, afraid, calling for help? Responding to that cry in any capacity other than eating them is an expression of empathy. It’s the “ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal, or fictional character.” 

You see, empathy is rooted in the evolutionary psychology of mammals, birds, and some reptiles, amphibians, and fish. When a grizzly stumbles upon a helpless cub that is lost and decides to adopt that cub and raise them with her own, she does so through empathy. When she takes on a boar that’s twice her size, in a battle of life or death for the survival of her cubs, she does so out of empathy for her cubs. When an alligator hears the distress calls of her babies and comes charging in with all the explosive furry we normally attribute to that mother bear, she is doing so out of empathy. When I follow the tracks of a bobcat through the snow, studying the change in pattern, attempting to create a picture in my mind of intention (was she running, dragging a kill, being followed by a Tom, heading toward ambush points where she may currently be hiding), I am doing so by trying to “recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings” of the bobcat. Empathy. 

There is much to be considered here in terms of art and wildlife photography. 

For us to be successful as visual artists, we must first create work that people connect with. I’ll put aside the discussion on anthropomorphizing wildlife for the time being – to be returned to later – and instead keep this focused on how this is all relevant to the angle of view. 

To create a connection, to create empathy, we must help the viewer transcend the species barrier. We must create photographs that allow people to momentarily enter the lives of the wildlife subjects we are photographing. 

Does this sound a little heady? It’s not. It’s basic art. 

Bringing the viewer eye to eye with the subject is the first step we make as photographers toward helping to create that oh so important connection.

The history of our civilization is inextricable from that of the horse. Ironically, the species came a hairs breadth away from going extinct according to the global fossil record and was quite literally rescued from this fate, it would appear, when our species discovered that we could ride them instead of just eating them. Today, people whose lives are still entangled with these animals have the deepest of bonds with horses. And as anyone who has spent time with these magnificent animals can attest, whether wild or domesticated, standing eye to eye with a horse is an experience that can invoke so many different emotions as they press their muzzle against you. If you have experienced this on some level, then you know firsthand the power of being eye to eye with another species and the connection and empathy this creates. 

Most animals we photograph are nowhere near as large as a horse, however. Save for species the biologist George Schaller coined the term charismatic megafauna for, we rarely, if ever, find ourselves looking eye to eye with another animal or finding ourselves on the same plane of existence. We do this with our pets, of course, as we get onto the floor and play with dogs and cats that we also find deep connection and empathy with. But for everyone else, for the rest of the animal world, it’s back to looking down our noses. 

And this is a problem. 

When we stand along the side of a road, tripod fully extended, peering down at an animal such as a grizzly bear or fox, we are creating photography that only helps to perpetuate the disconnect that our society feels / suffers from with the natural world. We as a culture feel disconnected and apart from nature for the very simple reason that we no longer experience nature on its terms or see ourselves as a part of it. This otherness, this lack of understanding, is the antithesis of empathy. And as a result, our feelings of alienation and separateness and the gulf between us and the natural world grows larger with each generation. But when we compose our photographs of animals to help our viewers momentarily enter into the life and times of that species, we create a bridge between them and that world they feel so ostracized from. 

This is the role of art in society. Be it painters or natural history writers or landscape photographers or those of us who prefer to spend our time with long lenses and animals, we have always served the role of creating a bridge between two worlds.  

If you want people to connect with your work, then you must help them do so. If you want people to connect with the wildlife in your photographs, then you must do everything in your creative power to build that bridge between them and that animal in your composition. This is why it’s not good enough to just pick up a camera and start snapping photos. This is why it’s not good enough to just take “documentary” shots. This is why so many photographers continue to struggle with improving their wildlife photography – there’s no bridge, no connection, no empathy. 

How someone sees and connects and relates to our photographs all comes back to how we compose those photographs of wildlife to give them something to connect with in the first place. And the very first step in creating that connection between human and wild animal is to do whatever it takes to level your camera with your subject and turn your lens into the bridge between species. 

Writing all of this out, I feel like I can already hear the eyeballs of some readers slapping the back of their head as they roll their eyes at all of this. But my intention here is to give you the why of the thing. Why is it so important to do this? Why does it work to do that? I have no interest in just spelling out a basic set of rules or suggestions for composition based on my twenty plus years as a professional artist. I know for myself at least, simply being told to do something was never good enough. I usually forgot it, ignored it, or rebelled against it. But to understand the why of the thing was different and is why most of us learn the hard lessons of life through actual experience rather than words. 

Bringing our cameras eyelevel with our subjects does so much to help people connect to those subjects on a deep psychological level. But even if talking about empathy and building bridges between species isn’t something your quite ready to consider, there are also tremendous impacts upon the actual picture space as well. And what this does to create the illusion of depth and dimension is game changing for our compositions.