Mastering Birds in Flight. IV
Moving beyond the technical and toward creative strategies
Over the past year in PhotoWILD Magazine, I have discussed at great length the various things one needs to understand to both master and simplify bird in flight photography. Far from being the most challenging form of wildlife photography that serves as a proverbial eye of a needle we all must pass through, success with birds in flight, at least from a technical perspective, comes down to just a handful of things such as understanding which AF Area Modes to use, the role that wind plays in the movements of birds, and why manual exposure, and not using Auto-ISO, makes things simpler. All of which I have discussed over the last four issues of the magazine.
But now it’s time to move on.
Now it's time to dip our toes into something a bit more subjective, and a whole lot more fun: the creative side of photographing birds in flight.
While it is easy to become obsessed with the technical side of wildlife photography, the nuts and bolts of the camera, the never ending pursuit of surgical precision when it comes to autofocus systems, none of this is what makes for a good photograph.
This is, in my humble opinion, what holds many photographers back when it comes to their birds in flight. And thus, as this series of articles continues, I am going to begin discussing the creative side of photographing birds on the wing. This is where the magic happens. And it’s these concepts that ultimately make for beautiful photographs, the ones that jump out at you when you see them, the ones that tell stories, the ones that go beyond the boring and cliché photos of a bird flapping by against a blue sky, and are almost guaranteed to make you run faster, jump higher, have cuter grandkids, a better backhand, and tighter buns (at least in the minds of your adoring fans on social media).
And in this article, I am going to discuss one of my favorite types of bird on wing images, one that is both captured in the field and created behind the computer: vertical flight shots.
Back in the day, when kids played outside, teenagers didn’t walk into door jams because they were looking at their cell phones, and photographers all used some type of film, vertical birds in flight was something of the pinnacle of achievement for many wildlife photographers.
If you think capturing in focus images of birds in flight is difficult today, I should probably remind you that it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that Nikon and Canon even released their first SLR cameras with autofocus. Prior to this, we squinted into an optical viewfinder, twisting a focus ring on our lens, swinging our equipment through the air trying to keep up with a bird, all while attempting to line up two little half-circles in the middle of our viewfinders that hypothetically told us when to stop twisting the focus ring back and forth; all in hopes of achieving something that at least appeared kind-of-sort-of in focus. The results, by today’s standards, would get you laughed off Facebook and Instagram. But at the time, this was how things were done before this strictly modern phenomenon in wildlife photography of hyper-obsession with surgically precise technical perfection.
To create a vertical bird in flight photograph up until the mid-to-late 1980s meant that one must do all of the 7,230 things between trying to acquire focus, make compositional considerations, and hope you are not too underexposed with your 36 frames of ASA 400 film, only to then chose to rotate the camera into portrait orientation and HOPE the bird banks vertically in the sky while you still have your lens pointed in the right direction with those two little half circles lined up.
Accomplishing something like this was akin to riding a unicycle while juggling bowling pins and balancing a ten-foot pole on your head with spinning plates on top.
Some could do it. Most couldn't.
Or perhaps I should say, most shied away from such masochism. Most wildlife photographers were left wondering what life choices, or series of catastrophic events, had unfolded in a person’s life to lead them to this point where they would spend a lifetime and countless thousands of dollars of wasted film in hopes of capturing a handful of vertical flight shots; all while looking around for a hat to throw a few dollars into for them, of course.
Today, things are different.
Today, we simply crop.
With sophisticated autofocus systems, with megapixels galore, with the ability to roll off 20-30 frames per second (can you imagine that with 36 frames on a roll of film!?), with the ability to then throw all of it onto a computer where we wield software like some sort of magic wand, we make a decision after the fact as to whether or not a photo should or shouldn’t be a vertical bird in flight image.
Personally, I love these types of images.
Birds in flight can get tremendously boring unless you are constantly finding new ways to portray those birds in the air. Just typing this, I can feel the blank stares that are coming my way soon for such a statement. But trust me when I say that once you have overcome the focus and exposure challenges of this style of photography, creating a unique and beautiful perching photograph is often infinitely more challenging. But capturing those decisive moments when a bird tips on end and shows us those masterpieces of evolution they’re working with, is one of most exciting opportunities for photographing birds on the wing.
Vertical flight shots stand out to us because they put the bird and all of their beauty in the sky on display for us. As a bird banks, as their wings flair, as they tip and dive or adjust course on a dime, they face unique challenges of physics, wind, and flight. And it’s this overcoming of those challenges, complete with all of its g-force inducing powers, that can really make an opportunity extraordinary.
In composition, there's what I refer to as the visual flow of a photograph. I use this term to explain how the subject and other elements of the composition pull our eye through the picture space. Normally this is dictated by the movements of the animal, their direction of travel, and their body posture. For example, a bird flying straight at you with wings spread apart means that everything about that bird lines up horizontally and thus the visual flow of the image demands a horizontal composition.
Consider the cover image of this article. Nothing about that opportunity cries out for a vertical composition.
Likewise, a bird flapping its way from left to right does the same thing for the visual flow of a composition. The ways in which our eyes process this information, along with the visual cues themselves, all lend themselves toward a horizontal orientation in our photographs. Cut a vertical crop out of a photograph whose visual flow is horizontal, and our brains stumble and get hung up on the jarring lack of harmony.
But when a bird suddenly tips its wings, whether they are making an abrupt turn or are setting up to drop into a high-speed hunting stoop, everything about the visual flow of the situation changes. Now, suddenly, wings are positioned vertically, one up and one down. The orientation of the bird has changed dramatically. If we think in terms of dominant lines and angles within our compositions (which we should be), this posture in a bird will also create a sudden and stark diagonal line across the composition at times.
Diagonal lines have the power to instantly grab our viewers attention. Diagonal lines create tension in a photograph while horizontal lines create harmony. This is why painters throughout the Baroque period built their compositions around both real and perceived diagonal lines, thus leading to the term, "Baroque Lines." And it's in these moments that we begin thinking about a vertical crop within the photograph, one that emphasizes the sudden and sometimes explosive change by turning those diagonal (or vertical lines) into the dominant visual of the image.
Take a look at the three examples below.
The first is by Guido Reni. Notice how the diagonal line, the Baroque Line, seems to be the thing in which everything else in the composition in built around. These lines do not actually exist in the painting. But the visual flow of the composition is built around these perceived lines.
The same goes for the second painting which is by Caravaggio. Once again, we find that these diagonal lines are implied. Here, Caravaggio went even further so as to pile up most of the compositional elements on one side of the painting, using dark negative space in chiaroscuro fashion, to create even more tension similar to how we might compose a pronghorn or a cheetah running out of the frame instead of across it, to also create tension.
Not to be compared with Guido Reni or Caravaggio, of course, you can see in this photo of a bald eagle how that the orientation of the composition loosely lines up with Baroque lines as well. With wildlife photography, we don't have the same measured control over all aspects of our composition like painters do. In many ways, this is the challenge we face that those who start with a blank canvas do not. However, when the opportunities arise, when we are considering our photographs through the lens of composition first and foremost, then we begin to see and capture and cull and edit our photos around these very same principles.
Thus, when we are photographing birds in flight, when everything comes together just so and our birds make a hard bank and the visual flow of the image lends itself to a vertical composition all of a sudden, I am thinking in terms of diagonal baroque lines, I'm thinking tension, I'm thinking power.
And all of this sits at our fingertips when we bring our images back home and onto the computer.
Examples. . .
Spread Eagle
Where Beauty Meets Baroque
Sometimes light and wind and bird all come together in such a way as to really make those wings and feathers spread out. Part abrupt turn, part putting on the breaks, opportunities like this are ones I am always looking for when photographing birds in flight.
With great light and a very simple background to work with, I didn't need to consider other compositional elements like distant mountains or horizon lines. Nor did I need to consider how shadows fell or danced with highlights (shadows tend to be perceived as solid objects in two-dimensional mediums and so we compose with them accordingly). And so, my decision to cut a vertical crop out of this image all came down to negative space.
When we photograph birds in flight, as a rule of thumb, it’s important to leave a little breathing room around our subject in the viewfinder. In photojournalism, we call this “shooting loose.”
Things happen abruptly sometimes. When photographing fishing eagles, for instance, they can bank and flair and flip upside down and dive toward the water in a blink of the eye. If we are always shooting tight compositions of them as they fly, then we are guaranteed to miss these moments. With an eight foot wingspan, these birds can quickly become all knees and elbows in our compositions if we aren’t careful.
As such, with large birds close up like this, I am always shooting loose with the expectation I will tighten up my composition in Lightroom. This isn’t the same as depending on megapixels to get the image. This is a decision made to ensure I don’t clip wings, not because the bird is too far away to make a meaningful photograph otherwise.
But how much space is too much space in our composition?
The answer to this is, of course, highly subjective.
We consider the size of the bird, we consider what their wingspan is (another reason for understanding the biology and biographies of our subjects) and adjust accordingly.
It also depends on what else is happening. What's the background? Are their towering and snow covered mountains back there that need to considered?
A bird against a blue sky, such as this one, means the bird is the only thing that matters for me. It's similar to photographing an animal against a stark white background to create a high-key image; it's all about the subject and that negative space around them.
But when confronted with the possibilities of something more than "just" a bird in flight, I am always going to prioritize the larger composition over the bird.
It's for this reason that some images of birds in flight become vertical crops for me and some don't.
Once again, notice how the posture of the eagles and positioning of her wings lends itself nicely to composing the vertical crop along the same Baroque Lines discussed above.
Spread Eagle
Where Beauty Meets Baroque
Sometimes light and wind and bird all come together in such a way as to really make those wings and feathers spread out. Part abrupt turn, part putting on the breaks, opportunities like this are ones I am always looking for when photographing birds in flight.
With great light and a very simple background to work with, I didn't need to consider other compositional elements like distant mountains or horizon lines. Nor did I need to consider how shadows fell or danced with highlights (shadows tend to be perceived as solid objects in two-dimensional mediums and so we compose with them accordingly). And so, my decision to cut a vertical crop out of this image all came down to negative space.
When we photograph birds in flight, as a rule of thumb, it’s important to leave a little breathing room around our subject in the viewfinder. In photojournalism, we call this “shooting loose.”
Things happen abruptly sometimes. When photographing fishing eagles, for instance, they can bank and flair and flip upside down and dive toward the water in a blink of the eye. If we are always shooting tight compositions of them as they fly, then we are guaranteed to miss these moments. With an eight foot wingspan, these birds can quickly become all knees and elbows in our compositions if we aren’t careful.
As such, with large birds close up like this, I am always shooting loose with the expectation I will tighten up my composition in Lightroom. This isn’t the same as depending on megapixels to get the image. This is a decision made to ensure I don’t clip wings, not because the bird is too far away to make a meaningful photograph otherwise.
But how much space is too much space in our composition?
The answer to this is, of course, highly subjective.
We consider the size of the bird, we consider what their wingspan is (another reason for understanding the biology and biographies of our subjects) and adjust accordingly.
It also depends on what else is happening. What's the background? Are their towering and snow covered mountains back there that need to considered?
A bird against a blue sky, such as this one, means the bird is the only thing that matters for me. It's similar to photographing an animal against a stark white background to create a high-key image; it's all about the subject and that negative space around them.
But when confronted with the possibilities of something more than "just" a bird in flight, I am always going to prioritize the larger composition over the bird.
It's for this reason that some images of birds in flight become vertical crops for me and some don't.
Once again, notice how the posture of the eagles and positioning of her wings lends itself nicely to composing the vertical crop along the same Baroque Lines discussed above.
A Tale of Two Photos
To crop, or not to crop. That is the question.
In this next example, I want to show you two different photographs that were created a mere second apart. With the first one, I chose to stick with a horizontal orientation. On the other, however, I chose to crop the photograph into a vertical composition. And the reason I made the decision to crop one but not the other all boiled down to where a mountain peak in the background lined up with the bird.
When we talk about visual flow in composition, it’s important to understand this isn’t just about the posture of the subject itself. Remember, everything inside of our composition is important. Just as considerable amounts of time and attention and money is devoted toward the set design of a Broadway show, the backgrounds of our photographs are equally as important as the subjects themselves. And learning to see and compose with those other compositional elements in our photographs, such as the background, is one of the first steps we make to begin growing as a visual artist.
In this instance, I chose to create a high key photograph due to the overcast skies that prevailed. Overcast skies can be terribly distracting and quickly ruin a wildlife photograph. It’s for this reason we have the “rule-of-thumb” that on overcast days, we keep both sky and water out of our compositions. But as I am so fond of saying here at PhotoWILD, rules are meant to be broken. And purposefully blowing out the sky to create a high key composition is one really great way of breaking that rule.
Blowing out the sky reduced the snowy mountains in the background to little more than a handful of lines that implied snowy mountains. But those lines are important, as I talk about in another article in this issue. Our eyes immediately notice lines. And this means lines have the potential to distract from or help our compositions. And as such, where that mountain peak fell in the background was paramount to the photos I chose to keep horizontal and the ones I chose to cut vertical.
The horizontal image was kept horizontal because of the distance between the peak and the bird. I could have cut a vertical crop of this bird and not worried about the peak all together, but the peak was what helped balance the photograph while creating something of the “set and setting.”
In these two photographs, the horizontal and the vertical, both bird and mountain peak fall roughly along the vertical lines of the oh-so-popular “rule of thirds.” Sort of.
Not completely familiar with this compositional strategy? Imagine a tic-tac-toe board. Now, line up horizontal things along horizontal lines and vertical things along vertical lines. That’s one way to do it. Another approach is to place important things in your composition and the intersecting points of those horizontal and vertical lines. And a different take on this is to juxtapose two primary compositional elements around the two vertical lines, such as I did with both of these photographs.
In neither photograph is the eye perfectly aligned along these lines. That part doesn’t matter so much with the rule of thirds. With the horizontal image, the vertical lines cut through the body of the bird and hit the peak of the mountain perfectly. With the vertical image, the photograph is composed for the left line to run down the wing that is thrust skyward, and the other with the mountain peak.
From my perspective, this is exactly what needed to be done with both images due to the negative space around both bird and mountain.
For the horizontal image, I felt like the empty uninteresting space behind the bird was appropriate given the scale of the composition. But with the photograph I cut vertically, this empty space, both to the left of the bird and right of the mountain, would have been too much. Both bird and peak would have been swallowed up by too much negative space.
Negative space is an important tool to wield in composition. Emptiness can be used to create balance and harmony in a composition, such as we find in the horizontal photograph. And while there is a time and a place for sweeping amounts of negative space in a composition, large amounts of negative space must be something that is well considered and specifically composed for in the field to pull off.
I chose to include this example not to complicate things but to explain how that subtle differences in the background can impact whether or not you want to create a vertical image. A banking bird is not just a banking bird when other compositional elements are brought into play.
In these two photographs, the horizontal and the vertical, both bird and mountain peak fall roughly along the vertical lines of the oh-so-popular “rule of thirds.” Sort of.
Not completely familiar with this compositional strategy? Imagine a tic-tac-toe board. Now, line up horizontal things along horizontal lines and vertical things along vertical lines. That’s one way to do it. Another approach is to place important things in your composition and the intersecting points of those horizontal and vertical lines. And a different take on this is to juxtapose two primary compositional elements around the two vertical lines, such as I did with both of these photographs.
In neither photograph is the eye perfectly aligned along these lines. That part doesn’t matter so much with the rule of thirds. With the horizontal image, the vertical lines cut through the body of the bird and hit the peak of the mountain perfectly. With the vertical image, the photograph is composed for the left line to run down the wing that is thrust skyward, and the other with the mountain peak.
From my perspective, this is exactly what needed to be done with both images due to the negative space around both bird and mountain.
For the horizontal image, I felt like the empty uninteresting space behind the bird was appropriate given the scale of the composition. But with the photograph I cut vertically, this empty space, both to the left of the bird and right of the mountain, would have been too much. Both bird and peak would have been swallowed up by too much negative space.
Negative space is an important tool to wield in composition. Emptiness can be used to create balance and harmony in a composition, such as we find in the horizontal photograph. And while there is a time and a place for sweeping amounts of negative space in a composition, large amounts of negative space must be something that is well considered and specifically composed for in the field to pull off.
I chose to include this example not to complicate things but to explain how that subtle differences in the background can impact whether or not you want to create a vertical image. A banking bird is not just a banking bird when other compositional elements are brought into play.
Pro Tip
You can add these lines as an overlay inside both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. There is a feature called Crop Overlay, that allows you to cycle through various "overlays" that can be used as guidelines for cropping and fine tuning your composition.
To experiment with this, simply bring up the Crop Tool in either Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw.
Then, tap the O key.
As you continue to tap the O key, you will cycle through the various Crop Overlays such as the Rule of Thirds grid, Baroque Lines, the Golden Ratio and even the Fibonacci Sequence.
Some of these Crop Overlays, such as the Baroque Lines and Fibonacci Sequence (sometimes referred to as the Fibonacci Spiral) are oriented in reverse of how your photograph lines up. Not to worry, however:
Simply tape Shift + O to change the orientation.
In this first image with the Crop Overlay added for reference here, you can see the vertical and horizontal lines of the Rule of Thirds. The compositional strategy is designed to break up your picture space into thirds. Lining up key elements of the composition along vertical, horizontal, or intersecting points helps to create a balanced picture space.
Most photographers already know about the Rule of Thirds, however. What is far less known is the Middle Line.
This too is an option in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw's Crop Overlay tool.
It's unfortunate so many photographers have all drank the "never center your subject" Kool-aid. Far from being some sort of a compositional mistake, centering subjects along the Middle Lines is a powerful way to draw focus in on the the subject and what matters most - the eye.
There is so much more to composition than just the Rule of Thirds. Though this image was largely built around the oh-so-rudimentary concept, I felt like it was important to elaborate here on additional compositional strategies so you can see how other ideas come together.
When it comes to art, when it comes to composition, there really is no right or wrong way of doing things. For every so-called "rule" about art, there are any number of opposing ideas and theories.
The Compositional Crop
While this article is technically supposed to be about photographing birds in flight, or more specifically, artistic strategies for birds in flight, inevitably the concepts here spill over into other aspects of wildlife photography.
Cropping should never be done as a means of getting closer to the subject. Figuring out how to compose with the lens you have, and the distance you have to work with, is a big part of the art and challenge of wildlife photography. You are an artist, embrace it. Instead of relying on megapixels to create the images we want, we use the crop tool, and the various crop overlays that Adobe provides us, to fine tune and polish our compositions – not to change how big the subject is in the frame.
This is what I refer to as the Compositional Crop.
With birds in flight, some situations call for a vertical crop. Others do not. Just because a bird banks hard or flairs, does not mean the opportunity for a vertical crop is automatic. Instead, these decisions are generally based on both the posture of the bird as well as the background the bird is juxtaposed with. As artists, we must think holistically in this regard. To consider only the bird is to be short sighted and reactionary. Instead, we have to consider the whole picture.
With this photograph, thinking of the whole picture, the small shaft of light and color reflected into the almost midnight blue of the water below the eagle dictated my decision to both keep this image as well as crop it vertically. Reflected light and the orientation of the bird lent themselves nicely to this type of compositional crop.
The Compositional Crop
While this article is technically supposed to be about photographing birds in flight, or more specifically, artistic strategies for birds in flight, inevitably the concepts here spill over into other aspects of wildlife photography.
Cropping should never be done as a means of getting closer to the subject. Figuring out how to compose with the lens you have, and the distance you have to work with, is a big part of the art and challenge of wildlife photography. You are an artist, embrace it. Instead of relying on megapixels to create the images we want, we use the crop tool, and the various crop overlays that Adobe provides us, to fine tune and polish our compositions – not to change how big the subject is in the frame.
This is what I refer to as the Compositional Crop.
With birds in flight, some situations call for a vertical crop. Others do not. Just because a bird banks hard or flairs, does not mean the opportunity for a vertical crop is automatic. Instead, these decisions are generally based on both the posture of the bird as well as the background the bird is juxtaposed with. As artists, we must think holistically in this regard. To consider only the bird is to be short sighted and reactionary. Instead, we have to consider the whole picture.
With this photograph, thinking of the whole picture, the small shaft of light and color reflected into the almost midnight blue of the water below the eagle dictated my decision to both keep this image as well as crop it vertically. Reflected light and the orientation of the bird lent themselves nicely to this type of compositional crop.
There's no need to worry about photographing birds in flight vertically. Shoot loose, as the world of photojournalism says. This will give you room to work with. This will build in a safety net of sorts in case the bird flairs or tips end over end suddenly. Then, once you bring the images back to the computer, make the decision as to what should be done with such photographs.
Keep them as is?
Crop vertically?
Tighten up the composition?
The choice is yours. You are the artist.
It's important to understand that my suggestions here in this article, as well as any other article in PhotoWILD Magazine, are completely subjective and should be considered only as my artistic opinion.
Sure, I have been at the business of making a living as an artist with my wildlife photography for a couple decades now. But at the end of the day, art is nothing more than a subjective interpretation.
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