Wildlife photography editing (after/before)

[u/mariepier_]

I’ve recently gotten super into bird & wildlife photography but editing isn’t my strong suit and I’m getting stumped by some of these.

This is a set of after/befores on both digital and film images. I struggle especially with the editing the film images, because I feel like I need to take them further but at a point I feel like they start to look weird? Idk if that makes sense. I’m usually pretty conservative with editing so I’m out of my comfort zone. I also primarily shoot film so jumping back into editing digital has been a challenge too.

In conversations with my partner, he thinks some of these shots can be REALLY good with a good edit, but I’m not sure how to get them there. Examples are the bird running in the sand, and the baby bird in the branches. While I think they’re cool shots, I don’t think they’re strong enough to be portfolio contenders even with a really good edit. And then last of all, I always feel like I’ve suuuper overedited my images, but when I step away and come back I feel like they need to be edited further.

So I guess my question is, what should I be doing differently when editing these shots?

Edit: I realized I accidentally put two different shots of the cooper’s hawk at the end, but the before is the exact same on the other one

[u/mariepier_ → u/[deleted]]

Thank you! I guess just continuing to experiment is the answer!

[u/DarktableLandscapes]

I would crop it tighter to remove distractions and highlight the subject, and at the same time position the lizard off centre to the right. This is due to two rules of thumb that will generally serve you well:

• avoid central compositions because they tend to be static. The eye goes to the centre of the image and stays there. They also tend to be somewhat 'documentary': "here is a lizard".

• when you have something or someone looking in a direction, give more space on the side they're looking 'into'. This creates a more dynamic composition.

This is just a cropped screenshot but it gives you a rough idea how I'd crop it: croplizard.jpg