In the video industry, they often refer to "look-room." Look-room speaks of leaving enough room for the subject to look into. Photographers would say, "leave more room in front of the subject than behind it." This not only applies to moving subjects or subjects intending to or created to move (such as a car or bike) but to people and animals. We need to pay attention to where the subject is looking. The subject then needs to be placed compositionally in the image to leave room in the direction of the look.

          The natural human response to someone looking in a certain direction is to also want to look at what he or she is looking at. This means that if a subject is placed near the edge of the frame while looking towards the same edge of the frame, the viewer's eyes will want to leave our image and look towards that edge and off of the print. There are rare circumstances where that might work compositionally like where an animal is being chased and needs to escape out of the scene to survive. Mostly though, we don't want the viewer's gaze to leave the image. Our goal is to have someone look at the image for as long as possible.

          Therefore, if the animal or person is looking towards our left, we place them on the right side of the image and vice versa. We want the viewer to look into the image not out of it.

Think about composition and look-room. Be willing to swing the camera this way or that way depending on how the person or animal moves his or her head. Look-room is important.

          These images were taken early one morning in Botswana. When getting to such a scene, there are a few things to look out for in choosing where to position yourself:

• The direction of the sun. Remember that sunlight from behind creates a rim-light. Sidelight is usually dynamic with nice shadows. Frontlight, if early morning or late afternoon light, is warm and beautiful but can result in a flat image. Note that shooting into the sun can be challenging in terms of dealing with dynamic range.

• The background. For animal photography, we want a distraction-free background. The more uniform the better. The more blur-able the better (the further away from the background the better). Avoid bright colors and detail in the background.

• Reflections. If there is water in the scene, try to shoot from an angle where you can see the reflection nicely.

Always be thinking when shooting. Remember, amateurs take images, pros make images.