looking
at a single screen than you do a single photograph. Similarly, most people flip through magazines quickly, giving the average photo just a few seconds of their time. A photograph is only one image, so people feel they can get the message right away and move on.
Your job as a photographer is to catch the attention of viewers before they have a chance to flip the page or move on to another image. Creating compositions in which the elements are balanced throughout the frame and the message is informative is a great way of doing so. Viewers can't help but notice harmony within the frame of an image. When the elements in a photograph are balanced, they show viewers how to see the image and hold their eyes within the frame. Plus, having a sense of scale provides viewers with information that's necessary to understanding the size and distance relationships of elements within the frame.
In this section, I discuss the compositional weight of elements and how you can affect that weight. I also describe how to include a sense of scale in your compositions and the benefits of doing so.
Keeping the elements balanced and property Weighted
When arranging the furniture in a room, would you ever choose to place everything on just one side? Sure, you may do it to create a dance floor for a party, but for everyday living, you probably arrange the furniture in a way that gives it balance.
Balance isn't absolutely necessary, but it's natural and can work wonders for your photographic composition. An unbalanced composition in a photograph may give your viewers an uneasy feeling when they look at it — a good thing only when you do it intentionally. Generally, you want people to enjoy looking at your images, and you have many options for achieving this mission through balance. Each element has a certain visual impact in your frame known as its
In photographic composition, weight refers to the amount of impact an element has in comparison to the other elements in the scene. A larger element has more weight than a smaller element; an area with more contrast has more weight than an area with less contrast; and a more colorful element has more weight than a duller element.
When you use symmetry in a composition, you aim for an even distribution of weight, which may mean size, shape, tone, color, and so on. With symmetry, for every element you place on one side of the frame, place something of similar weight directly across on the opposite side.
By creating balance with symmetry, you give viewers a subconscious desire to move their eyes back and forth through the frame. A composition divided up into equally weighted sections gives viewers more to look at than a composition that only has one point of interest.
You don't have to achieve perfect symmetry to have balance. Your goal is simply to create a composition in which your points of interest aren't all crammed into one area, but are spread evenly throughout the frame.
In Figure 12-1,1 positioned the
Figure 12-1: Balance achieved through symmetry.
Even though it's an option, symmetry isn't often used in photographic composition because it can be considered stiff or boring. Instead, usually you compose a scene asymmetrically. This technique, which I describe in the next section, is known as
To create informal balance, you distribute the weight of a scene's elements without using symmetry. The elements don't mimic each other's shapes, sizes, colors, or placement in the frame. However, they're still placed strategically to keep your viewers' eyes moving from one element to another, covering the entire area of the composition.
Figure 12-2 provides an example of informal balance. Notice how the image has no symmetrical qualities. The green car is close to the camera and has elements of contrast and color, which help to make it stand out as the subject. The neon lights of the buildings draw your attention to the upper-left side of the frame and then lead your eyes into the background where a car's headlights grab your attention. Although the green car is the main focus of this scene, the composition provides interest throughout the scene.
Figure 12-2: Informal balance achieved with contrast and color.
Creating a composition in which the subject has the most weight is okay, but if you want to give your viewers something to move on to, share some of the weight with other elements in the scene. Have the weight gradually decrease in the order that you would like your viewers to move through the frame. You could do so by having slightly less contrast from one element to the next or by having the size of each element gradually get smaller.
Color works great for controlling the balance in a composition. Each color has an opposite (refer to the color wheel provided in Chapter 6) and a certain
weight, so be sure to position the elements of your scene with color in mind. Here are some specific suggestions:
Spread the color throughout the scene instead of having all the strong elements of color stuffed together in one area.
Use an element of color to balance out an element of size, shape, or tone.
Balance color with the absence of color. If one small red dot appears in an otherwise neutral frame, the color stands out (has weight). It also will be balanced by the vast amount of the frame that's lacking color.
Refer to Figure 12-2, and note that the blue sky and orange street on the right side of the frame contrast with each other as complimentary colors. Check out Chapter 6 for more information regarding color in your composition.
An area in your composition that contains no points of interest — no clearly represented element but space itself — is referred to as
A strong subject positioned in the bottom left corner of a frame surrounded by nothing but blank space would appear to be unbalanced. However, if you find the right amount of negative space with which to surround that subject, you can achieve compositional balance.
Each situation is different and requires you to judge how much negative space is necessary in a particular scene. You can determine how much negative space you need to balance out your subject by looking at how heavily weighted your subject is and where it's positioned in your frame.
Figure 12-3 shows how the appropriate amount of negative space can provide balance in a photograph. This example shows how much negative space was required in this scenario to make the image equally about the subject and the negative space.
