SMALL In the frame

San Bruno Mountain SP, California, July 2024

What’s the right crop for a wildlife photograph? The tendency of many photographers (including me) is to showcase the subject as large as possible by cropping the image (though never too tight a crop as that can look very awkward). We are all familiar with such beautiful, but dime a dozen, images showing a bird on a stick with superb feather details and a pleasing blurry background. However, more and more, I am enjoying having the subject small in the frame with as little cropping as possible. This can provide a much more unique, artistic and pleasing photograph. Such images also end up showing the subject in a better context in its habitat. One final consideration in cropping is portrait vs. landscape. I find that apart from composition, my crop decision ends up being in the end driven by where I want to post the images and what kind of screen the audience will view the image on. ”Small in the frame” and/or landscape works best for large desktop or laptop screens, while “Bird on a stick” and/or portrait seems to work best for mobile phones. Here are three different crops of the same image of an Orange-crowned Warbler (Leiothlypis celata) taken on a foggy morning with the sun creeping through and shining on yellow fennel at San Bruno Mountain SP in San Francisco Bay Area. Judge for yourself, which one you like the best.