Something I was thinking about this weekend while I was out photographing was about how some subjects lend themselves to a greater variety of composition possibilities than others. Quite often you are access limited, or at the mercy of wildlife behavior in determining the final composition you will end up with. If you are in a blind tucked away on the side of a marsh, you don’t have a lot of choices. You pretty much leave it up to chance and a bit of planning. This can really stifle creativity.

However, some other subjects may be in a good location, in abundance and you can literally spend an entire morning in an area of a few square feet. This was the case with the butterfly weed images I recently posted in the gallery. Some wood ducks are posted there also. Both subjects from the same general location, but very different in the compositional opportunties they offered.

With wildlife, especially weary animals like wood ducks, you pretty much have to pick a spot and stand still. Move around and they are gone. You can’t really ‘work’ them like you can with other subjects like plants. You are at the mercy of what they want to do. Sometimes you have wildlife that is extremely approachable and very accomodating. These are times where you can just let it rip – savor it as well because they dcon’t come often.
With the butterfly weed, there were all kinds of things possible, only limited by your imagination and how much time you wanted to spend on a particular subject. When faced with a subject like this, I like to use a technique originally taught to me by Rod Planck during a workshop. Get that camera off the tripod and start walking around. Analyze different angles, perhaps use different lenses – when you see something you like, only then bring the tripod to the camera and make the exposure. As much as my tripod is joined to my hip, it gives a great sense of freedom to just put it aside for awhile.

Inanimate objects don’t always lend themselves to massive amounts of opportunity. The subject may be difficult to photograph, difficult to access or be surrounded by swarms of 10,000 mosquitoes. I also find that my mood or fatigue level limits the variety of compositions that pop into my head and limits my ability to see them.

The first step is finding that friendly subject to begin with, then hopefully the other things will fall into place.