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One of my pet peeves is poor positioning of the bird within the frame. This could include not giving the bird enough room between the body (the head in particular) and the edge of the frame or cropping off part of the bird (the tail in particular). I see the latter fairly often as the photographer looks just at the head or body during the cropping process and then cuts off the tail. Usually just a bit of the tail is missing so it doesn’t seem to be that bad a faux pas but it bugs me, particularly if it could have been avoided.
Let’s take a look at two versions of the same image of a Fox Sparrow eating. In the first picture I’ve cropped it so there is room around the entire bird so nothing is chopped off.
When I looked at the result I felt like the seed in its mouth was lost. It’s a busy picture with lots going on so your eyes are drawn in many different directions. I decided to recrop the shot so that the seed in the bird’s mouth was more visible, but as a result I had to crop off most of the tail to do so! Take a look now:
Was it worth breaking one of my own composition rules? I think so. The tail was far less important than seeing the seed in the mouth. What do you think? Does the new crop tick you off or does it improve the shot? Reply to the email or write your response in the blog post’s comments and let me know.
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