Showing the animal in its habitat

Learning goal

You will be able to build an animal not only as a portrait filling the frame, but as a wider frame showing it together with the place where it lives: its reed bed, its salt pan, its tree or a village's electricity pole. You will decide consciously how much room the animal will take up in the frame, and even when it stays small, let the eye find it through light, contrast and space. You will choose the elements in the frame that tell the viewer where it is, and turn the background from being only a smudge of color into part of the story. You will do this without approaching the animal, by switching to a shorter focal length or moving back a little. You will also photograph the people who share the same place with the animal in a way that shows their labor and their presence in the frame, with their skin in its own color.

The question

Your friend shows the frames they brought back from the migration weeks at the club. The spoonbill is sharp, the shorebirds' feathers read one by one, the backgrounds soft and clean. A member asks: where is this spoonbill, is this a lake, a salt pan, or a zoo? Your friend can't answer; in every frame there is a bird, but no place. There isn't a single frame showing what kind of world the bird lives in, what it walks on, what is changing around it. What does it mean to move from portrait to environmental photo?

Context

In the people and portrait lessons you met the portrait that shows a person in their own setting, inside their work or their home (Lesson 16.1). While working on foreground and depth in the landscape track, you tried making a very close element and a distant landscape speak in the same frame (Lesson M.3). Working on migration and wetlands, you also followed which part of which wetland birds use, and how they spread out across reed bed, mudflat and open water (Lesson Y.6).

A long lens fills the frame with the bird and melts the background; this is a powerful tool for showing the animal itself. But the same tool also erases half of the animal's story: where it lives, what it depends on, how the place it lives in is changing. If the stream flowing beside a bird dries up, if a reed bed becomes a road, the bird's portrait can't tell this; a frame shot together with the place where it lives can. This lesson takes up showing the animal and its place together.

Simple explanation

How does the place appear in the frame?

A habitat shot is a frame showing an animal together with the place where it lives, with a framing wide enough for the place to read too. A stork's nest appears on top of a village's electricity pole, with fields and houses behind it; a shorebird stands on the white crust of a salt pan, with salt heaps in the distance; a squirrel shows up on the trunk of a plane tree in a park, with a bench beneath it. These frames carry less detail than the animal's portrait but tell much more: where and how the animal lives, and often how it lives side by side with people.

For these frames a shorter focal length, for example between one hundred and two hundred millimeters, or a wide angle, works. You don't need to approach the animal; often it is enough to stay in the same place and shorten the lens, or step back a few steps. Wide-angle frames very close to an animal can be shot without disturbing it only if the animal is used to people, or with a remotely triggered camera. No habitat shot justifies crossing the animal's flight distance.

How much room does the animal take up in the frame?

The animal-to-frame ratio is the ratio of the area the animal takes up in a frame to the whole frame. In a portrait this share is large; in a habitat shot it is small, sometimes a few percent of the frame. A small share isn't a problem, but the eye needs to find the animal. Light is the strongest tool for this: a single bird catching the sun in a shaded reed bed, however small it stays, draws the eye to itself. Contrast helps too: a dark bird on a light salt pan, a light bird on dark water, stands out at once.

Space is a tool too. Leaving a plain, even area around the animal separates it from the busyness of the frame. Leaving space in the direction the animal is looking or moving gives the frame a feeling of movement. What the animal-to-frame ratio will be isn't a rule, but a decision made according to what the frame wants to tell: a frame telling that the animal belongs to a place can keep it small, a frame telling the animal's loneliness in that place can make it smaller still.

What tells the viewer where it is?

A habitat cue is an element in a frame that tells the viewer where and in what kind of place the animal lives. The dense stems of reeds, the cracked crust of a salt pan, footprints in the mud, moss on a rocky shore, the tiles of a village roof, the wires of a pole are each a cue. One or two strong cues are enough; too many elements crowd the frame and make you lose the animal. Bringing the cue into the foreground joins the near-far thinking of M.3 with the animal: cracked salt close by, a flamingo walking in the distance.

The people who share the same place with the animal are also a strong cue. A farmer plowing their field under the pole with the stork's nest, a fisherman casting a net in a wetland, show how the animal and the person live in the same place. These people too need to be photographed with their permission, in a way that shows their labor. The late-afternoon light coming from the side is a light that models both the bird and the person; on light skin it gives a warm glow, on dark skin a deep and detailed brown. Metering from the person's face keeps them in their own color, together with the bird standing behind against the sky.

Visual evidence

This time your friend goes to the lakeshore with a zoom between one hundred and four hundred millimeters. They know the shallow water where the spoonbill feeds. First, at four hundred millimeters, they shoot the bird's portrait; then, from the same place, they open out to one hundred millimeters.

In the frame the bird is now small: in the shallow water where the reeds curve, behind it the wide surface of the lake and distant hills. The late-afternoon sun falls only on the bird's white feathers, the reeds in shade. The eye finds the bird at once. They take one of the nearby reeds into the foreground and leave space in the direction the bird is walking.

On the way back, at the entrance of the village, they see a stork's nest on top of an electricity pole; beneath it, an old farmer parking his tractor, a dark-skinned man with a gray mustache. They ask his permission and take the nest, the stork and the farmer into the same frame. They set the exposure for his face, struck from the side by the evening sun; his skin warm and detailed, the nest and the stork behind against the sky.

Common mistakes

Summary

Moving from portrait to environmental photo is building a habitat shot that brings the animal and the place where it lives into the same frame: shortening the lens to take the place into the frame without approaching the animal, choosing the animal-to-frame ratio according to what the frame wants to tell, and making the small animal findable through light, contrast and space. One or two strong habitat cues name the place; the people who share the same place with the animal are shown with permission and with their labor, exposed for their faces, in their own color.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will photograph the same animal both as a portrait and as a habitat shot.

1. Find a bird or an animal and, without disturbing it, shoot its portrait with a long focal length.
2. From the same place, by shortening the lens or stepping back a few steps, shoot a frame that also shows the place where it lives; separate the animal with light, contrast or space.
3. Choose one or two habitat cues in the frame; if there is a person who shares the same place, get their permission, take them into the frame too and set the exposure for their face.

Check yourself

• In the habitat shot, can the viewer understand where the animal is?
• Does the eye find the animal that stays small at once?
• Does the person in the frame look like a decoration, or like part of that place?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What does a habitat shot show?

• A) Only the animal's eye
• B) The animal together with the place where it lives
• C) Only the sky
• D) The animal's feathers one by one

2. How close do you approach the animal for a habitat shot?

• A) Close enough to fill the frame
• B) Right up to the nest
• C) You don't approach; you shorten the lens or step back
• D) Close enough to cross the flight distance a little

3. How does the eye find a bird that stays small in the frame?

• A) When it is separated by light, contrast or the space around it
• B) When the frame is busy
• C) When the bird is right in the corner of the frame
• D) Never

4. Which one is a habitat cue?

• A) The camera's settings
• B) The lens's brand
• C) The file's name
• D) The cracked crust of a salt pan

Answers

1. B — A habitat shot is built wide enough to also let you read where and how the animal lives.
2. C — The place is taken into the frame by shortening the lens or stepping back; the flight distance is never crossed.
3. A — A small figure that is lit, contrasting in tone or surrounded by plain space draws the eye to itself at once.
4. D — The cracked salt crust tells the viewer that the animal lives on a salt pan.

Summary card

• A portrait tells the animal; a habitat shot tells the animal and its place.
• Don't approach; shorten the lens or step back.
• The animal-to-frame ratio is a choice; separate a small animal with light, contrast, space.
• One or two strong habitat cues are enough.
• Show the person who shares the same place with permission and with their labor, exposed for their face.

Bridge to the next lesson

For weeks your friend has been going to wetlands, lakeshores and strait hills; on weekdays, though, the camera stays in the cupboard. One morning, drinking their coffee on the balcony, they notice a blackbird searching for food in the plum tree in the apartment garden and a kestrel perched on the edge of the roof. Is there wildlife in your garden? The next lesson takes up nature inside the city, gardens, parks and roofs, as the place to start wildlife photography without going far.