When I first started photographing wildlife, I felt the need to fill the frame and make the animal the photograph. I wanted the eye, the detail, the expression, the clean background. I wanted the wildlife to dominate the image.

And sometimes that is exactly the right choice.

A close portrait can reveal expression, texture, age, character or connection. A behavioural moment can be so strong that anything around it simply becomes a distraction. There are images where the animal carries the whole story, and adding more to the frame would only weaken it.

But over time, I started to realize that not every wildlife photograph became stronger when the animal became larger.

Sometimes the thing that drew me to the scene was not just the animal. It was the weather moving in behind it, the way it stood within the landscape, the distance between animals, the light, the river, the forest, the scale of the place around it.

Sometimes the wildlife is the subject, but it is not the whole story.

The shift came when I stopped viewing the wildlife only through the viewfinder and stepped back to consider the entire scene. I started paying more attention to the habitat, the landscape, the weather, the light, and how all of those things interacted with the animal.

Sometimes those elements were simply background. Other times, they were part of the story.

A bear standing beneath a glacier is not just a photograph of a bear. The landscape gives the animal scale, and the bear gives the landscape scale in return. Take too much of that environment away, and you may still have a beautiful bear photograph, but it becomes a different photograph.

The same is true when an animal is standing in a river, moving through deep snow, crossing open tundra or disappearing into a forest. The habitat starts to tell us something about the animal’s life. It gives us context for where it lives, how it moves through that space and, sometimes, just how small it is within a much larger world.

I think this is one of the reasons I have become increasingly drawn to photographs where the animal does not dominate the frame. That does not mean I automatically photograph wider. It means I pay more attention to what the environment is contributing before I decide how much of it to include.

There are times when the landscape is adding very little, and I will tighten the composition. But there are other times when the environment is doing just as much work as the animal. The river, the mountain, the open prairie or the forest is part of what made me stop and look in the first place.

Weather can completely change that equation too.

I have photographed wildlife under clear skies and made images I really like. But there is something very different about an animal moving beneath a storm front, standing in falling snow or emerging through fog. The weather changes the mood before the animal has done anything differently.

A line of animals moving across open ground beneath a dramatic sky feels very different from the same animals beneath a flat blue one. The behaviour may be identical, but the image is not. The sky introduces tension, scale and a sense that something larger is happening around them.

Light can play the same role. Sometimes it simply helps us see the animal. Other times, the light becomes part of the emotion of the photograph.

A shaft of light catching only part of an animal can create mystery and tension. Backlight can reduce detail but strengthen shape and atmosphere. Soft light can make a scene feel quiet, while harder light can make the same scene feel much more dramatic.

The animal has not changed. The way we experience the photograph has.

I have also become much more comfortable leaving space around wildlife.

Earlier in my photography, empty space often felt like something I needed to crop away. Now I am much more interested in what that space is doing. It can create isolation, vulnerability, calm, tension or a sense of scale that disappears once the animal fills the frame.

There are photographs where that space is the reason the image works.

A lone bird or owl does not always need to be larger. If the quietness of the landscape, the openness around it or the way it sits within that space is part of what I felt when I saw the scene, then keeping that space allows the photograph to hold onto some of that feeling.

The same is true when more than one animal is involved. The distance between animals can matter. The direction they are looking can matter. The way one follows another, avoids another or simply shares the same space can become part of the photograph.

Tightening too much can remove that relationship altogether.

I see this often when photographing wildlife in groups. A bear moving toward birds along a shoreline, animals spaced across a field or several individuals positioned differently within the same landscape can all tell us something about what is happening. The space between them can be just as important as the animals themselves.

The environment can also become part of how the animal moves through the scene. Rocky terrain, deep snow, water, fallen timber or steep ground can shape both the behaviour and the photograph.

In those moments, the landscape is not simply where the animal happens to be. It is part of what the animal is navigating.

That is where I find myself slowing down more now.

Instead of thinking about how close I can get to the animal, I try to notice what else is happening around it. I look at the space, the weather, the habitat and the relationships within the scene before I decide what the photograph needs.

Sometimes I still come back to the close portrait.

There are moments when the expression, the detail or the connection with the animal is enough. In those photographs, leaving more of the environment in the frame can actually dilute the thing that matters most.

The goal is not to photograph every animal small in the frame.

A wider composition is not automatically more meaningful, just as a tight portrait is not automatically more powerful.

For me, it comes back to understanding what drew me to the scene in the first place. Was it the animal itself? Was it the way the animal belonged within the landscape? Was it the weather, the light, the space around it or the relationship between animals?

Once I understand that, the composition becomes easier because I am no longer deciding how much of the animal I want in the frame. I am deciding how much of the story I want to keep.

Sometimes the wildlife is the story.

Sometimes it is only one part of it.

And some of my favourite photographs have come from learning to see the difference.