What's that old saying... "Rules are meant to be broken"?   I had been thinking about this as a topic for awhile when I happened to watch a weekly photography talk show on the internet called "The Grid".  The  subject of the show was "How to Become a Better Photographer in 2014." You can watch the it for free here: http://scottkelby.com/2014/how-to-become-a-better-photographer-in-2014/ .   One of the points made was to throw away the "Photography Rules"  ... once you've learned and understood them!  

I thought Wow ... no problem ...  I've got that one covered.  And thus this post.

Let it be said there are a lot of rules in photography particularly about composition.  And, no area of specialty seems to have more rigid ones than Bird Photography!  Many, I think, are without merit...

The first rule I learned was "No Butt Shots in flight!"   I initially posed a question about this to a World Famous Bird Photographer and his reasoning was that it was too easy to capture an image of a bird flying away.  Huh?

So, here's an image of a pelican flying away that violates the rule, and which shows some elements of the bird in flight that can't be seen from any other angle!

Cutting off body parts is another bird photography rule ... I mostly agree with this but there's no way the following image could be captured without clipping one of the wings ... as you can see, there is no way to put the entire bird into the frame ... the bird is too close, and it is a perspective that most individuals never get to see ... why arbitrarily throw it away?  The shot also violates another composition rule:  "There should be more space in front of the bird than behind it."

And in this next image, I've managed to cut off body parts of two birds ... that's called "killing two birds with one stone!"  :-)

OK, let's break all the rules in one single image:

I think most bird photographers would instantly hit the delete key when they saw this image the first time.  Doing so, though, deprives the viewer of seeing a unique view of two birds close together getting ready to dive after the same fish.  Sure, I clipped off the wing tips of the first bird, but do you doubt they are there? Yes, it is a butt shot but look at the tail feathers and its feet ... they are an important parts of the birds ability to steer.  Holy cow!  I've cut off most of the bird flying behind ... do you doubt it is there? Can you imagine what it looks like? Can you see the water droplets on the underside of its beak?  Oh, and there's some on the first birds beak, too!

What do you think?  Should I hit the delete key for this image or keep it?

Adam

P.S.  BTW, none of these images were cropped in Photoshop.  They came out of the camera composed as you see them.