Negative space

Negative space

I’ve tried hard to write this blog day by day. Sometimes, I know what each word I’ll be exploring, and sometimes not. So this morning I was scratching round for a photographic N.

Negative space is an odd concept in composition… It’s about using what isn’t there as a positive part of your image. This is a bit of a paradox, and I’ll suggest that paradox is an important part of art and life in general. People who can cope with the idea that contradictory ideas need to coexist are often the most creative and at ease with the world.

If you remember a bit of mechanics from maths, you may want ot think of negative space as being a very long lever. You’re balancing something large (the space) with something small (the subject) – and yet, somehow, it works. If central and symmetrical is boring, and moving off-centre is interesting, maybe moving offcentre to the max will make it more so. Possibly to the max…



Now, it’s possible that one of my more analytical friends can suggest what the rules of negative space are: but it’s beyond me to say more than that I know when it looks right, and I sometimes spend time thinking about exactly how far to push the subject towards the edge. It varies with different subjects, definitely: some stuff needs to be comfortably towards the edge of the frame, while other objects demand to be right up against the margin.

And I think negative space may be easier to accept for some subjects than others. In my own special area, portraits and nudes, most photographers tend towards making the model fill the frame. It can be fascinating, though, to make the viewer work for the image, look round the frame to find and appreciate a small figure in a much broader context.

Anyway, if you haven’t tried it before, go and shoot a picture today that involves negative space, and put a link to it below when you post it.

After all, it’s pretty likely that you’ve got time to play with a new concept at the moment, even though it may be hard to execute images in a crowded home…