P#8: A Photograph of Just the Head of a Lion Amidst a Sea of Grass

An Unusual Photograph of a Lion

Roy Toft: The next shot is kind of along those same lines of an interesting composition.

We haven't talked about it but almost everybody knows about the "rule of thirds" in photography. That's taking your subject out of the middle of the frame.

You get it out of the middle and put the subject somewhere around where an imaginary tic-tac-toe board with the lines crisscrossing at 1/3 through the frame would intersect

This image is really taking that rule or that idea of thirds to an extreme by putting the female lion's head way up in the right corner, as far as it could go. Then, I have that sea of grassland in the foreground and all throughout the rest of the frame. (click the image for a larger version)

I really like people to be bold when they do their compositions.

Don't be kind of blasé and take the picture like everybody else is going to take the picture. Think of it as your own vision of things.

When I saw this sea of grass, I wanted just to see a ton of grass, with just that lion's head way up in the corner, not be too large, just enough. That's my fourth picture.

Summary

Be bold in your composition. Don't take the same picture everyone else would take -- have your own vision.

This shot of the lion with its head in the corner illustrates how interesting bold compositions with a different vision can be.