Cropping Wildlife Images

A big thanks to Pieter Pretorius for his guest post and video yesterday.

I was lucky enough to to meet Pieter last year when I did a drive for WildEarth TV.  He is truly one of the nicest people you can imagine and his passion for what he does shines through in his images.  Personally I think the first image with Lieschen, Pieter’s better half, and the elephant is absolutely perfect.  If you are on Facebook drop in on Pieter’s page and check out some more of his images.  You can also catch up with him most days as he presents live game drives from the Sabi Game Reserve by using the links at the bottom of his guest post yesterday.  Incidentally, if you have not checked out WildEarth TV - you have to!  Having seen it and been involved, even for one brief moment, it is truly amazing!  If I ever get the chance I would love to visit be involved again!

Anyway, on to today’s post.  Framing and composition is probably one of, if not the, most powerful way in which you can create striking wildlife and nature images.  By following basic principles like the ‘rule of thirds’ you will already be well on your way to creating strong images but there will be times when a little cropping during your post production can make a huge difference.  Cropping can affect your image in various ways, some of which includes:

• Removing unwanted detail around the edges of your image that could distract form the subject.
• Changing orientation to highlight certain key lines in you image.
• Help to lead your viewer’s gaze in a certain direction by assisting visual lines.

As with anything like this it is a whole lot easier with images so let’s look at the first example.

The image above was taken in Madikwe and shows a dramatic sky above Tafu caves.  Overall not a bad image but the focal area, the caves, seems a little lost in the middle of the frame.  The leading lines in the image also tends to lead you eyes from left, along the caves, towards the angry sky on the right and by doing so keeps your gaze around the middle of the image, rendering the top and bottom portions of the image useless.  By cropping these two areas out of the image you end up with this.

In this image, cropped into a panorama-type image, the visual elements of the image are a lot more tight.  Your eyes play between the caves and the dark sky and this movement is more pronounced due to the long crop assisting this horizontal movement.  Visually this image is a lot stronger then the first version and all it took was a bit of the top and bottom.

Another similar example can be seen below.

As this Impala ran across the road I panned along to try and create a movement blurred image.  This obviously took a bit of pre-planning which included choosing a small aperture and slow shutter speed to get the proper amount of movement blur but shooting these kind of images, on purpose is a whole different discussion!

In order to capture this image I chose to keep the subject in the middle of the frame as I knew that sometimes they might jump and if I were zoomed in too tightly I might end up with an image of half an impala.  The idea here was always to crop a little but I ended up removing a whole lot more than expected.  To assist the right to left movement I wanted to leave a bit of space in front of the Impala to move into.  The bright sky also felt a bit distracting so I wanted to crop that out of the final image.  Here is the result.

An image where there is no doubt as to the subject matter and the movement is also assisted by the long crop.  This is also a very useful way in which to place a subject on one of the ‘rule of thirds’ power points.  If, for example, you shoot a flying bird you might center the bird in you viewfinder as it is easier to track and the focus is also sharper in the middle of your censor.  Afterwards you can now go and crop the image slightly to place your bird in a position which will make for a more dynamic image.  Easy!

It is all fine and well to do major cropping but sometimes less is more.  I sometimes feel that I am too critical with small things but then again, if I can fix it… why not?  Check out the following example.

In the image on the left I felt that the little branch in the top right corner distracted from the lion portrait.  See, told you I sometimes get too critical!  By simply cropping off the top area, to remove the branch, the image is now just that little bit cleaner.  That little bit better.  Sure, it might be a small thing but as with many things in life the devil is in the detail.  Is this something that can make a good image great?  I doubt it but it will make a great image just that little bit better.

One of the the other ways in which you can use cropping to modify your images is to change the leading lines in an image.  This is probably not the most common use for cropping but instead of only slightly changing an image it can create a completely new image all together.  The following image of a male lion has no real leading lines to speak of.

To change the image all together I cropped most of the distracting bushes out of the image by taking a landscape image and changing it into a portrait image.  This is what I came up with.

This image now shows the same lion but it has a completely different feeling.  The subject is still the lion (duh) but the the focal areas are more clear. You are firstly drawn to the lion’s open mouth and then down the mane towards the outstretched front legs.  The moment you get your viewer’s gaze move around your image you know that it has something.  Also, on a completely different note, portrait layouts are more sought after for magazine layouts due to the vertical print space.  Use it, don’t use it!

One more example of how cropping can change an image.

The above image shows a matriarch elephant towering over her herd.  A nice image which has clean lines and colors as well as different textures.  Now as mentioned I might be a tad critical of my own work but in a clean image such as this I want the focus to be 100% on my subject and there should not be any distracting elements.  For me the black area in the bottom right pulled the eye just a little bit too much so that was the first thing I wanted to get rid of.  By cropping out this black area my image was starting to look very square.  Not necessarily a bad thing and something I quite like.  A square crop gives an image an immediate ‘fine art’ feel.  If you look at how various artworks have been framed and mounted you can see where it comes from.

After cropping my image to almost square, and removing the black corner here is the result.

It might not be everybody’s cup of tea but I feel that this image works quite well as a square crop.  The tight framing mimics the togetherness of the herd and there are no distracting elements in the image that even slightly pulls your eyes away from the matriarch.  Clean, simple and square.  A pretty good combination which might also work very well as a black and white fine art print.  Hmmm…

Cropping should not be seen as a separate part of the photographic process but rather as a continuation of the vision that you had even before clicking the shutter.  If you keep this in mind when you next head out to shoot wildlife you will be amazed at how many more options you will start noticing when you compose your shots.  Remember that even though I might be quite critical, cropping is a part of the artistic process.  Each person will use it differently and with very different results.  You might not like the way I cropped my images and you might have done it in a completely different way but that is the great thing about our craft.  The possibilities are endless! Oh, and also remember that a crop cannot fix crap and you still need a good starting point to start from!

Most of todays DSLR, and many other digital cameras, give you a lot of megapixels to play with when cropping.  Anything over 8 megapixels will give you more than enough room to play with but in this case more is actually more.  The more megapixels you have the more you can crop in and still produce high resolution images.

As always, if I have time and any interesting images I will post them during the weekend but if not I will be back on Monday.  If you go out shooting this weekend, or just play around with some of your images in your digital darkroom, play with some creative cropping.  Use it, play with it and see how you can improve your wildlife images. Great fun and a good exercise in composition as well.

Have a good one!

Gerry