>>4477284>Did you try framing your birds in the rule of thirds or somewhere on the, maybe for this one, left border?I do try off-center compositions with my subjects, but very rarely.
Many reasons as to why, aforementioned PTSD aside - when I said I'm a snapshiiter I wasn't joking.
The "right", "professional" way to do wildlife photography is to scout a location, wait for good weather, go there at a certain time of day, organize a watching spot, maybe even set up feeders/place bait, etc. This is what usually results in great photos we see online, and being able to think carefully about your composition is one of the perks this approach gives.
I just open a map, select some large green area that I can reach in under 90 minutes using public transport, and go there to snap photos of whatever I can find. Hell, sometimes I just go there without a camera, as I like to explore forests and swamps. Provides nice contrast to my sedentary office worker lifestyle.
Doing things this way means that my subjects are almost always surrounded by distractions that are not worth including in the shot, and usually I don't have the luxury of composing for longer than 2-5 seconds.
So I only really do off-center composition out of necessity, when one of the sides is less ugly than the other.
Today's squirrel to illustrate, and to provide contrast to the black squirrel above.
