When you start out in photography, you will likely shoot nice and freely. Then, you begin to cloud the issue with theory and compositional rules as you improve your work, but it can come at an initial cost. That is, your work might feel as if it has become a little worse the more you try to adhere to rules. Once you have made sense of the rules and they run almost unconsciously in the background, you can find that you run into a new problem.
Once I was shooting within the common parameters of photography, I sometimes realized that I was creating images to fit invisible templates without much forethought and it led to images that just didn't feel right. I would look at them and, in theory, they work, but I know in actuality that they do not. A lot of the tips in this video by the brilliant bird photographer, Jan Wegener, fall perfectly into this category for me. For example, by adding a little more room above my subject, suddenly an awkward image feels just right. If you're a wildlife photographer, this video might be all the more useful to you!
