Second Nature: The six-point capture checklist (Part one)

Stop! Your heart’s telling you to shoot, but what about your head?

With many years in the field, we’ve learned to put a quick check on ourselves in the seconds before committing to a capture. Pressing pause rather than the shutter release. That slim window often makes all the difference between a decent image and a great one.

We like to re-evaluate for a split second, running through a quick mental checklist to help maximise photographic potential and minimise mistakes in the heat of the moment. We do this most times we photograph – except, of course, for action shots when a speedy response is paramount.

It might seem counter-intuitive to slow down when faced with a subject that might bolt any minute, but that small intake of breath, pays dividends. Harbouring a few ‘second thoughts’ soon becomes second nature - almost as instantaneous as your initial, quick-fire, reaction. 

We find questioning what we’re doing is particularly helpful in teasing out a more personal take. It certainly gives us precious seconds to fine-tune things at the point of capture.

1) What’s my gut saying?

As post-production software gets more sophisticated, it’s tempting to click first and ask questions of your image later, changing things wholesale at the editing stage. We’re not averse to getting creative with our editing software back in the office, and we value the key role post-production has in the whole picture-making process.

But we reckon our images are stronger, and more authentic, where we’re able to get things down ‘fresh’, as we shoot. We’re not talking here solely about the things you consciously pay attention to when you take a photograph. These are important, but they come further down our checklist. This is a much less tangible thing: making sure you get your gut reaction to the situation down.

It’s much easier to preserve that raw emotional response to a subject when it’s right there in front of you than it is to recreate the feeling later when your memory’s dimmed. Call it magic, secret sauce, being in the zone, what you will, we reckon there’s a spark of something between you and the subject in the moment that adds greatly to the overall impact of your image.

Taking a moment before firing gives you space to clear aside your preconceived notions. Instead of imposing your ideas on things, let the situation act on you. You’re much more likely to get a fresh take this way and avoid coming away with the obvious or the overly-cliched.

2) What do I want to show people?

To make the best image possible you need to be sure what you’re directing the viewer to see.

Look around and beyond your subject before you press the shutter to check what else the scene may contain that just might make your image stronger. A good nature image is not solely about the animal, insect, reptile or bird in front of the lens, remember.

We’re often inspired to take wildlife pictures because we love the background colours, because there are beautiful patterns in the scene, or there’s an interplay of shapes or shadows, for example. It’s often not the species alone that grabs us, but the great picture-making ingredients at hand we can use to emphasise our point and make our subjects shine brighter.

If you can tell a story at the same time all the better. The narratives most of us exploit in wildlife are generally the literal natural behaviours of our subjects, but if you can also imbue your nature images with universal appeal, beyond the realm of nature, they’ll resonate more with your audience.

Take a second to check if any broader concepts could be teased from the scene before you set up for your shot. When we’re observing wildlife in the field, we automatically start thinking about wider ideas the species suggests - family, connection, society, conflict, aggression, and so on. Such things act powerfully on a human level, giving your pictures dynamic extra layers of meaning and relevance.

Before you go to press the button ask yourself ‘What do I want to emphasise here?’  Pinning this down early in the process will drive the whole thing. All your technical and creative choices can flow naturally from here.

3) What’s the best viewpoint?

In many situations an obvious viewpoint suggests itself. It’s perfectly fine to go with this and, often, there’s little time for much else. But what if a better alternative exists?  If you don’t investigate, you’ll never know. Worst-case scenario - you end up back where you started.

We always ‘work’ as many different viewpoints in a situation as we can. It began from a commercial need to get as many images as possible (bangs for our buck) from our sessions in the field to justify the time and resources spent. By happy coincidence we discovered this was also a great way to dig out where the best picture in any given setting might be hiding.

Wherever possible you’ll find us scouring all around our subject, varying our angle of view as much as we can. Many wildlife shots work best from a low angle, of course, or on eye level with a subject, but what about the fresh perspective to be had shooting from underneath a subject, around the other side, or above?

Lie down, shoot from an even lower angle, down in a ditch or a hollow perhaps. Climb a bank or a mound, get closer, move further away or zoom out, swap out different lenses (if there’s time) photograph through foreground flowers, grass or foliage, between tight breaks in tree lines or gaps in man-made structure. It’s about working the angles until you find something that excites you.

Remember even tiny adjustments can make huge differences to your picture. So even where you’re happy with your viewpoint, it’s worth just moving around a bit to ensure you’ve got the very best ‘take’.

For example, we often find we can get even better symmetry in reflection shots just by shuffling our position a tad before we shoot. The same if there’s annoying foreground or background clutter. Remember too you can shoot in portrait format as well as landscape. It’s amazing how easy it is to forget that if you don’t stop and take a breath.

Next time you’re out humour us by shooting the viewpoint that first suggests itself, then shoot a crazy, ‘wild-card’ version by way of an experiment. It’s fascinating how much you can lose yourself doing this and it’s often when the best image is prised out.

Look out for part two next week. 

About the authors: Ann & Steve Toon are a UK-based, husband and wife team of award-winning, professional photographers with a specialist interest in the wildlife and wild places of southern Africa where they spend several months each year photographing and running photographic safaris.

Their work is published in a wide range of magazines and national newspapers, both in the UK and abroad, and they are reprepresented by several leading photographic libraries. They've also written three books, two on wildlife photography and one on rhinos. You can see more of their work on their website at toonwildlife.com and follow their African adventures on on their 'Beat about the Bush' blog at toonphotoblog.com.