Perspective Photography Tips for Wildlife Shots

Hi, I'm Ian Plant. and right now I'm on Photo Safari in Kenya. And whenever I'm photographing wildlife, I pay very close attention to my perspective which is my position relative to my wildlife subject. Which is controlled mainly by how high or how low you are relative to your subject. A relatively high position, like what I have right now, can be useful if you're photographing a subject that's in tall grass and it's hard to get a good view of the animal unless you get a little bit higher.

It's also useful if you want to exclude the sky from the composition. So for example, today it's an overcast day. So the sky is cloudy and gray, and it's gonna be distracting if I include it in the composition. So a higher perspective allows me to pin my wildlife subject against the landscape background rather than that unattractive sky. A lower perspective is useful when the sky is interesting and you want to include it in the composition.

So as you go lower, the animal is gonna begin to intersect the horizon line and then be above the horizon line. So you want to think very critically about where you want the horizon line to be in the picture. It's usually best not to have the horizon line cutting the animal in half. So I like to go low enough so that most of the animal is above the horizon line pinned against the sky. As you get lower to a ground level perspective, you can start incorporating elements of the foreground such as tall grasses in your composition.

And if you're shooting with a telephoto lens wide open that foreground element is gonna be rendered as an abstract out of focus, artistic blur. So when you're photographing wildlife, pay close attention to your perspective, try different variations, high, middle and low, and find out what works best with your subject. I'm Ian Plant and thanks for watching.