The Bear-y Essentials: Visual Weight, Positive Space, and Negative Space

A few blogs ago I used a word that we throw around in photography: Composition.

Composition is arguably the most important thing to get a grasp on in photography. You can have excellent lighting, and a really great subject, it may even be in sharp focus; but if the composition is off, you won't convey exactly what it is you desire to.

True, you could say something similar about the other things, but I still believe that composition is the primary thing to get right. Some of my favorite photos might not have great light or be in focus, but the composition is as such that it draws you in.

Composition is the arrangement of elements in something. You've likely heard of composite materials. They're materials made up of multiple different substances to form one particular thing.

In music, composition is the arrangement of tones spaced out over time. Different notes together form chords, chords and other notes compliment one another, and before you know it you have a song.

In the visual arts, composition is the arrangement of elements within a scene. The goal is to create a desired effect. That effect may be pleasing, or it may cause tension; it may make you have a sense of joy or a sense of dismay. Ultimately, it is storytelling in a visual form.

Some of the elements of composition are the concepts of positive and negative space, as well as visual weight. And that's what I want to just briefly cover today. If you're a photographer, I hope this will help you with these basic concepts, and if you're not then hopefully it'll either be interesting, or help you in just your every phone pics.

So to help us out, our friend Beary is going to demonstrate in several examples.

Example 1:

So I want you to ask yourself questions about the image. Where is my eye going? What is the subject? Well in this case it's pretty obvious, but in later examples it won't be as clear-cut. But can you sense a visual weight to the image? This is using positive and negative space in a very basic way to bring weight and direct the eye.

Definitions will help. I'll admit I'm not an art major, so if I blur some of the details, forgive me, but hopefully the images and descriptions will help.

Positive space is essentially the subject matter in a scene, though I personally feel it's more about the weightiness of portions of an image, but visual weight and Positive/Negative space are different concepts. Not a very scientific approach but it's how I see it. But in our first example, Beary would be the positive space. Notice how he 'feels' weightier to the eye, while the blurry background is negative space. It's basically that simple.

Different things affect our subject and his place in the scene, and they are compositional considerations to remember when dealing with it. Here's a couple examples that we'll elaborate on in a sec.

Example 2:

Example 3:

Example 4:

We know Beary is the subject, but how did each of these different images convey that? Was your eye drawn elsewhere? Here's why:

In example 2, Beary is too dark compared to the background. Your eye is naturally drawn to the brightest thing in a scene (typically). Shadows can actually be quite obtrusive and bring a lot of weight, but in more moderate lighting, brighter draws the eye.

In example 3, Beary is out of focus while the background is sharp. Your eye is typically drawn to the sharpest or most contrasty element in an image.

Finally in example 4, Beary is small and perhaps doesn't bring as much visual weight. Yes he's obviously the subject, thus positive space, he's exposed properly, he's in sharp focus, but he's such a small part of the frame that while it may draw your eye, he's very small in the image. But does it still look composed well enough?

What about negative space? Well again, it is the parts of a scene that feel empty, more open, the areas AROUND the subject. In our previous examples, the background was the negative space. The previous examples help us with some of the issues we can deal with there. Negative space can be too light, too dark (where it's just blocks of black shadow, which when used carefully present great results, but can also be distracting), too sharp, and there can be too little of it. Let's see a fifth example

Example 5:

Had to take that one with my phone, sorry for the quality difference.

Beary takes up way too much of the scene, leaving very little negative space. Not to mention the bright spots from the lower quality camera and exposure, and frankly just my not spending a ton of time on that image. But it's just for an example. Notice that even with him filling the frame mostly, your eye is still drawn to the bright spots?

The take-away from that is that you want to find a proper balance of negative and positive space, 'weighing out' elements in the scene for a proper balance. But you can find interesting ways to use this.

Perhaps a particular scene benefits from a lot of positive space; perhaps you want to fill the frame with a very interesting rock and leave just a wedge of sky. That can work if it achieves the desired effect, that is if it tells the story you want others to see. Maybe you want to take an image of a bird in a vast wilderness, and so you make the bird very small in the image. This can be good too, if it achieves what you're looking for.

There are no "rules" per say, but there are certainly guidelines and tools to use in image-making. For example, the subject might be completely blurry, but placed in such a way that it compliments the scene, and tells the story.

The last thing I want to look at for this particular idea is how can we use it to create simple and pleasing compositions.

Let's take two images side by side, our first, and a second where Beary is placed elsewhere.

Example 6:

Notice anything different? How does the second feel compared to the first? If you're like me, then you'll notice a little visual 'tension'. Why is that? The way a person, or animal, and even some things face causes us to move our eyes in that direction. So, for the first example, Beary is facing into the negative space. Our eye feels room to breath, making it feel more relaxed. in the second, our eye is drawn to the edge of the scene, blocked in. Our eye doesn't feel as free to move about, causing the visual tension.

It's really amazing how composition can move the eye.

But is it 'wrong' to place Beary facing that way? Not at all, if the tension is the desired effect.

So think of this as a VERY basic look into the ideas of positive and negative space in composition as well as visual weight, and there's a lot more to go into with it, but hopefully this is a simple primer. To close I'll leave you with this image I took a few years ago in Chincoteague. What can you notice about it compositionally?