Might seem like a really silly question, is it a landscape or wildlife photograph? But asking that and answering it for your photography just might make the final photograph more powerful. How? The answer to the question can effect everything deciding what is the subject to placement of the subject in the frame to exposure. For example, if the towering thunderhead in the New Mexico sunset is the subject, then you frame it in your viewfinder and let the Gtr Sandhill Crane fly into the frame and into place. If the Sandhill Crane is the subject, you might just pan with it and click when you see in the background the form of the thunderhead you like. And while the final photo might look exactly the same, how you came about it is different and that difference will effect the story you tell.
The funny thing to me is, most of the time when I show these types of images to folks, they think of them as a landscape photograph. While in my mind they are pure wildlife. I’m shooting of course with the D4s / 800mm, panning with the cranes putting them in the frame based on what I’m seeing in the background. Now you might be wondering why I’m shooting such big glass when the subject size is so small? Well with the cranes being nice and black (under exposure), their iconic shape says who they are so they visually pop without being huge in the frame. So the long glass permits me to select the more spectacular portion of the thunderhead for the background (and its red because when I see red in the sky, I go to Cloudy WB). Now we’ll all answer this question differently and that’s how it should be. What is important is that you find the answer for YOUR photography. What’s important is, that you ask the question.