This photo of a tiger cub with its mother was taken at Tadoba Tiger Reserve. Composition is an art and it takes time, patience and perseverance to collect your thoughts and compose the image you’ve visualised.

There are guidelines for composition, but as the name implies, they are just guidelines to be aware of. In this photo I composed an image where the mother’s face isn’t seen, and the legs and majority of the tigers’ bodies are cropped out of the frame…but still, I feel this image has a strong visual impact.

When you compose an image by breaking the guidelines, you need to ensure there is something in the composition that captures the viewer’s attention and holds their focus. The stripes and the overlapping legs of the pair creates a pattern that is enhanced by the proportional difference between the two; knowing that it’s a cub makes the image for me.

Canon 1D Mark IV + Canon 800mm.