The Holy Grounds in Wildlife Photography: Part 1

It was early October. I was out photographing wildlife in Yellowstone National Park’s Northern Range, which comprises the northern 20% of the park, and is, for a variety of geological and ecological reasons, the most wildlife-rich region of the park.

Just 30 yards away from me, a pronghorn buck grazed on golden grasses. The pronghorn and I were at roughly 6,600 feet above sea level, in an enormous, glacially-carved valley. This was his summering ground. He migrated here in April, leaving behind the prairie-like habitat of the Paradise Valley, which lies just north of the park, in search of the rich, green mountain grasses that grow here in the summer. Soon, he would begin his descent back out of the park and into the Paradise Valley, where he would winter in an environment that is both lower in elevation, and much less harsh than Yellowstone is in the snowier months of the year.

After a few minutes of grazing, he lifted his head and began to walk towards me. I got low to the ground and rotated my camera to be shooting in portrait orientation. As his gaze met my lens, I fired off a burst of photos, and in it, captured the photo you see above.

For most of you, I imagine that when you look at this photo, your eyes go straight to the pronghorn’s face, or at least body, rather than the grasses and sagebrush around him. Despite the lack of color contrast in this photo (which is an entire SERIES of newsletter articles in and of itself that I won’t get into today), the pronghorn still manages to stand out in this frame. Your eyes want to look at the animal itself, naturally drawn there by… what?

Well, that’s the topic of today’s article 😉 

Before I get into this, I should preface with a bit of a disclaimer. There are a multitude of tools that a wildlife photographer can use to draw a viewer’s eye in to a subject. Contrast, color, lighting, lines, composition… the list goes on and on. I hope to write articles about many of these in the future, but today, we are going to focus on the primary two tools being used to make the subject stand out in this specific photo: depth and simplification of the environment.

If you’ve done any landscape photography before, you’ve probably heard the phrase “foreground, middleground, background” over and over again. If you aren’t familiar with the phrase, basically what it states is that a well-made landscape photo must have a foreground, a middleground, and a background. If it doesn’t, it will lack the depth and interest you want in a landscape photo. I call these ‘The Holy Grounds,’ because they are so critical that landscape photographers almost worship them.

But this concept doesn’t just apply to landscape photos.

I’m going to try and convey how this works in the world of wildlife photography through a series of examples. Here is Example #1.

Example #1

Let’s start with what I did right here, that being the middleground. In 90% of wildlife photography, the animal will be in the middleground. There are exceptions to this of course, just as there are in any facet of photography, but generally, if you are using all 3 grounds, you want your subject in the middleground. In this photo, the pronghorn is in the middleground, and is sharp and in focus. This was done correctly. The foreground and background, however, are lacking.

Why do I say that?

Let’s look at another couple of examples.

Example #2

Example #3

These are better... a lot better actually. My eye wanders less and wants to stick to the subject. So what has changed? Not the middleground. The animal is in the middleground in all 3 photos. Not the foreground either, all photos feature in-focus grass, shrubs, sticks, etcetera in the foreground. But the background… the background has changed. 

The backgrounds in Examples #2 and #3 are less cluttered, more out of focus, and just less distracting overall in comparison to Example 1. The environments in these backgrounds have been simplified. Your eyes no longer wander into the backgrounds, while in the first example, they did.

So, we’ve now accomplished a well-made middleground, and a well-made background. Great!

Now let’s be honest with ourselves, most photographers stop here. We all know that we want the subject to be sharp and in the middleground. Many photographers know that it’s very important to create simplified backgrounds as well. But the thing is, middleground and background are only 66.6% of the equation.

Clean, thoughtfully-created foregrounds are far too often dismissed and looked over. The vast majority of wildlife photographers simply never consider the foregrounds that they are creating, and the results are images like those shown above. They aren’t bad images by any means… but they could be better.

Let’s look at a last couple of examples.

Example #4

Example #5

Examples #4 and #5 both have everything the previous 2 examples had: a sharp, in-focus subject in the middleground, and a clean, out of focus background.

The difference here lies in the foreground.

With these photos, I placed some of the environment (that being grass in both of these examples) in between myself and the animal. By doing this, I was able to hide some of those distractions, like the twigs and sagebrush seen in Examples #2 and #3, behind that foreground, and create a softer, more simplistic, clean foreground that doesn’t distract from the animal, but instead pulls your eye straight to it.

This is fantastic and all… but there’s more to this.

In addition to the environments around the animals being cleaner and more simplified in Examples #4 and #5, these images also have more depth in comparison to the previous examples.

Let’s look back at Examples #2 and #3. Both feel very 2-dimensional - you’ve got the animal and the ground it’s standing on, and the background. Two dimensions, or layers, and nothing more.

But looking at Examples #4 and #5, you’ve got a layer of environment in front of the animal, the animal itself, and then the background. These photos are multilayered and feel more 3-dimensional, like the real world, than the other examples do.

Additionally, you might notice that Examples #4 and #5 feel more grounded, and that the animal feels like it’s held within frame. In the other examples, it’s almost like the animal could “fall out” of the image, or at least exit it, and this is distracting. It makes the viewer subconsciously feel uneasy, and that’s not what you want here. What you want, is what Examples #4 and #5 have.

And why do Examples #4 and #5 have this?

Because of the use of foreground. The use of foreground adds another layer to these images, creating that depth that feels so very 3-dimensional, and it holds the animal in the frame, grounding the image and making it feel more whole.

So, to wrap this all up, depth and simplification of the environment are the things that lead your eyes to the animals in Examples #4 and #5 and make these images more impactful. And by working with what can we create these two things?

Foreground, middleground, and background.

Like I said earlier, this mantra applies to a lot more than just landscape photography. This is a mantra that as a wildlife photographer, you need to worship and swear by, too, because it really does have just as big of an impact your imagery as it does on a landscape photographer’s imagery.

So now you know how depth and a simplified environment work to draw the viewer in, and how the Holy Grounds work to create them.

But, how do you actually, physically use the Holy Grounds to create these in-camera, in the field? What settings should you use? Which angles should you shoot from? What can you do to further simplify the environment while actively shooting? How do you put what we just discussed into practice?

These are all great questions. And they’ll be answered in part 2 of this series :)