Overcoming being stuck in a rut with your wildlife photography?

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a rut with your wildlife photography?

Have you ever looked at your images and thought that they all look the same?

Have you ever truly reviewed your image portfolio with a critical eye?

Well the answer to all of the above for me was yes!!!

Early in 2023 I was in the process of sorting out my old hard drives and copying everything over to one large hard drive, and the thing that really stuck out to me was that a lot of my images were the same.

Don’t get me wrong – I had some good images, I even had some great images, but the majority were all quite similar in style. This got me thinking about my photography and my portfolio and I made a list of all of the similarities in the images.

• Sharp
• Front Lighting.
• Close Up
• Rule of thirds applied consistently.

Then I looked at images that really stood out and looked at the consistent factors of those images:

• Back Lighting
• Side Lighting
• Interesting composition
• Using the environment to add impact
• Slow Shutter Speeds.

After doing this exercise I then really considered how I had achieved these images and this changed my thinking on my photography:

Lighting

Any images that were not lit with Front Lighting (Light behind me) were mostly down to luck, or the position that I was in just happened to have the light in a different place. So I immediately became more aware of light and how light can impact your images.

Light is the one thing that all photographers need. Good light is what all photographers search for. Light and how you interpret it and use it can make or break an image.

This is really critical and will change your images from taking snap shots to taking great shots. Where you position yourself according to the light source and subject is critical, understanding what the light will do to the subject you are trying to photograph is really important.

When you really start to think about light, that is to say: its quality, direction, hue, etc. . .It transforms the way you see scenes and capture images.

If you want to capture beautiful wildlife photography, then you must learn to master lighting.

With careful use of light, you can capture stunning detail, you can create beautiful silhouettes, you can produce lovely golden images, and so much more.

But if you don’t understand wildlife photography lighting, then your image portfolio is likely to be very repetitive with no diversity. Exactly like the majority of mine.

This was the biggest single change in my images and my photography. This was evident when I was in Kenya in September. I found myself not seeing the lion but seeing the background and the way that the light lit the mane or showed the texture in the fur. This changed the way I would ask for the vehicle to be positioned and transformed my images.

Interesting Composition

Creatively cropping or framing your images can change the look of them dramatically. If you see a different composition then it is better to frame it that way, as the more you crop an image the smaller the file size will become, making it harder to produce prints etc. However, if you shoot with a camera like the D850 or Z9 which is a 45+mp camera then you are able to crop creatively a lot easier than on smaller mega pixel cameras.

Disregarding the Rule of Thirds

It is essential to understand that the basic rules of composition in photography are a general guideline meant to help you understand the basic framework in image making. If you get too stuck to those rules, your images may have a consistent pattern and become repetitive.

You can change the look of an image completely by really maximising negative space and positioning the subject at the extreme edges of the rule of third quadrants.

Linked to negative space is the background which surrounds your subject, and it is this often-overlooked element that can make or break an image (however important the positive space may be). The environment in which a bird or animal is photographed can tell much about the subject itself and its motivations and behaviours. As mentioned before, consistency in tone and colour can create a pleasing backdrop, particularly if it contrasts with the primary colour of your subject. On other occasions, a subject’s natural camouflage may be an integral element of the message conveyed.

While it is important to know and understand these compositional guidelines, as mentioned earlier, it is important to remember that they are just that. Stylistic consistency can be the mark of a good photographer, but overuse of one compositional technique can lead to your portfolio becoming bland and predictable. With experience, photographers develop an instinct for knowing when to apply these principles and when they should be left behind. You should never feel constrained by these or any other compositional principles and, when photographing the natural world, your subjects will often dictate the form of your images.

I had images that broke the rule of thirds and stood out to me in terms of composition, but I didn’t have enough of them, so I started to discipline myself to take a shot of a “correctly” composed image and then I took another image of the same scene but composed “incorrectly” I soon started to see ways that I could compose images differently and this started to become evident in my images. Now of course there is still a place for traditional composition and it still forms the large part of my images but every so often you get the chance to take something different and that is what adds interest and diversity to your images.

Using the environment to add impact

Most of my images showed the subject and just the subject but with no real story behind where it lived – the habitat or the environment. I then looked at my Mull otter pictures and these did show the environment, why had I done it here and not with other subjects? Well it was very simple. Otters are notoriously difficult to approach and I always try to keep a respectable distance from them so I don’t disturb them, now of course you get encounters where you are hidden behind a rock and the otter approaches you as it doesn’t know you are there and you can get some frame filling portrait shots, but in my case these encounters are probably about 40% of my otter images the rest show the environment. Because I simply couldn’t get any closer. But these images when put with the others told the otters story. This made me really think about my images and including the environment more. My go to lens was always my 600mm lens. This changed and I started to use my 200-400 lens more and more. When I was guiding a trip in Scotland in 2023 I left my 600mm lens at home, there wasn’t a great deal of room in the car for the lens with my clients and also if you are a photographic guide you should be adding to their experience not dominating a sighting with a huge lens just so you can get images. At times I thought I missed the big lens but I soon realised that the 200-400 lens gave me so much more opportunity to create different images so I started to really study the environment and backgrounds and really concentrate on telling a story of where the subject lived.

Simply put, the environmental wildlife portrait is an image depicting a subject in the context of its environment. While it may be tempting to use a large telephoto lens, or to zoom in as much as possible for every wildlife image, “head shots,” while nice, do not depict a subject’s relationship with its environment.

All of the elements that go into making beautiful landscape images are found in the environmental portrait. However, they have an added dimension — they tell a story. For example, an otter on the shoreline amongst the kelp and rocks provides a glimpse into its struggle for survival and search for food in harsh conditions. A lone wildebeest walking across the dried-up lakebed in the Amboseli NP with the imposing Kilimanjaro in the background provides not only a breath-taking image of their environment, but indicates the wildebeest’s vulnerability in a wild, unspoiled world. A family of Rock Hyraxes standing on a precarious rocky ledge overlooking the valley floor provides insight into its day-to-day life and the ability to excel in a difficult rocky habitat.

This is why zooming out and including important environmental elements can add a huge amount of interest and impact to the image which makes the viewer understand the world the animal lives in a little more.

If you want to tell your subjects story you need to show case the environment it lives in.

Slow Shutter Speeds

To be fair I had always loved experimenting with slow shutter speeds and showing motion in my images – I did have quite a few images where this technique had been used. But again when reviewing my images a lot of the images were almost an afterthought. It was almost like ok well I have taken heaps of images of the subject walking or flying, lets just do a couple of slow shutter speeds. But in a lot of cases I wasn’t really looking for the images I was just taking them.

In wildlife photography the desire is usually to capture animals that are pin-sharp, but what if we try a different approach and aim for something more abstract instead? The trick is to lower your shutter speed just enough to blur the movement of the animals, while still retaining areas of relative sharpness and legible shapes.

The results can be amazing. Things won’t be sharp, but in its place, you get a great sense of speed and motion.

You can try this technique out on any wildlife. It can pose a challenge in terms of focusing, framing and lens reach, but it’s worth it when you capture a moment that conveys animals in motion.

There are several approaches – we can keep the camera still and blur the animal’s movement, or we can pan with the moving birds and blur the backdrop. Or, and this is the most satisfying, we can aim to blur some parts of the animal, like the wings or heads while keeping other areas sharp. It takes time to get a great shot, and you might fill up an entire memory card for just a handful of pleasing images, but if you manage to capture something unique then it’s well worth the effort.

As a general rule. 1/50 second or slower will create a lot of movement and should be used for slower moving subjects.

You will find that a lot of images will not work out and there will be a low keeper rate, however, you do get a much bigger impact and a lot of additional blur, It will ensure that you’re your images stand out.

1/80 second to 1/200 second can be used for quicker subjects or for slower subjects where you want to create less blur. It still enables some detail to be in the background.

1/200 second can be used for much faster subjects. It is good for larger mammals and birds and creates movement whilst maintaining more detail in the background.

With panning it is really about experimentation and trying different techniques and speeds, the shutter speed can create such a difference in the image so try different ones, this experimentation combined with good technique will enable you to create some very different images.

But what about extreme slow shutter speeds?

This is something I had never tried, but when guiding clients in Scotland last year one of the clients introduced me to the work of Swedish wildlife photographer Erik Malm. His images just blew me away with creativity and using Intentional Camera Movement to create something completely unique.

So my obsession with ICM began.

The idea behind Intentional Camera Movement or ICM photography is to add the illusion of movement to a still image. Long exposure is crucial for this technique since it creates a lot of motion blur. When doing long exposures, the usual goal is to keep the camera still to produce a sharp image. Intentional camera movement delves into the opposite concept.

Instead of keeping your camera steady, you move it around to create colourful swirls and streaks.

You can move it in:

• Straight Lines
• Rotate It
• Zoom Bursts
• Random Movements

After reading a lot on ICM and studying Erik’s work (I still don’t truly know how he creates the images he does) I decided that my goal would be to practice all sorts of different long exposures and different camera movements at one of my favourite local places for wildlife photography. I did this and after a few weeks started to get some interesting results.

In September when I went to Kenya I was determined to try ICM images on safari. I had photographed wildlife in Kenya for 19 consecutive years up to 2019 and it was a destination I knew well, so for me it was important to add something new to my portfolio. So I started to shoot a lot of very slow shutter speeds and created some very different images.

ICM is not for everyone. In fact whenever I post anything on my social media pages, these images have some of the lowest amount of likes. But it is another technique that you can add to your portfolio and something very different.

So that is how I changed my photographic thinking. I wrote the book the Ultimate Beginners Guide to Wildlife Photography – from taking a shot to capturing a moment and that really helped me with being self-critical and working out which direction I wanted my wildlife photography to go in. I realised the one thing that all of my images that stood out had in common was that they captured a moment.

So I stopped taking images and started looking for moments to capture.

Those moments could be:

• Stunning light and your interpretation of it.
• Capturing a unique portrait of a common species.
• Capturing rare or unusual behaviour.
• Witnessing an extraordinary moment in a beautiful landscape.
• Capturing something in a different or unusual way

Whatever that moment is I have been able to identify that process and visualise the final image based on my interpretation of the scene.

Wildlife Photography is unique in the fact that it is highly unlikely you will ever be able to capture the same image again.

It is literally about capturing a moment!!!!

If you have enjoyed reading this then why not read my post on using light in wildlife photography.

If you are interested in learning more about creativity in wildlife photography why not join me on one of my Glasgow based wildlife photography workshops

Or better still join me on one of my wildlife photography tours where we really delve in to the details of creativity in wildlife photography.

If you would like to find out more about ICM photography and would like to see the work of the person that inspired me then have a look at Erik Malm Photography – Intentional Camera Movement Photography (ICM) by Erik Malm Photography