Greetings Happy Scrappers!
Polly Liana here, with a quick word about cropping and space in photography. If you’ve read up at all on composition of an image, you’ve likely heard of the Rule of Thirds. It’s the classic idea that, when composing an image, you should imagine the space cut horizontally and vertically into nine spaces. You should aim to place something interesting in the intersecting areas of the lines. This creates a nice visual balance in the image without placing the focal point right in the center.
However, there is certainly more to composition and cropping than just the Rule of Thirds and in this post I’ll name a few other things to consider. Here’s an image I did of my daughter’s cereal. The bowl was a perfect shape to be centered and filling up the entire image.
While there are lots of lovely photos with centered images, there is also a lot to be said for the use of negative space in composition. For example, you can’t fill a rectangular space with a circular image. So, the subject has to move to one side. In the case of this bowl of blueberries, centered would have created a dull image with no pleasing movement. By placing the bowl on one side, the image has some space so viewer’s eye has room to move around the image.
However, most of the time I am not centering my subjects, especially if my image is shot in landscape. In that case, I am considering a few different things: light, gaze and “breathing space.”
1. Light
One of the main things I consider when composing images is the light source. I try to give a little more space to the size with more light. This creates a visually pleasing balance, with a bit more space on the lit side of the subject, as I did in this photo:
2. Gaze
It’s a pretty common practice to leave some negative space for the subject to look into, as in this image of a gorilla:
However, I also like to occasionally use the opposite effect, if my subject has a playful or sly sideways gaze:
3. Breathing space
Here’s an image of my daughter, watching the snow fall. I could have cropped her much closer but I wanted to leave some room at the top for two reasons. One, I wanted to give her some space into which to look. Also, I wanted to emphasize her small size, compared to the large windows and vast snowy scene.
Hope this post has helped you consider how you frame and crop your images to create movement and interest. Happy snapping!
Jen (rfeewjlj) says
Great post – thanks for sharing!!
Karen says
Such beautiful photos Liana! I want shoot like you when I grow up! :)
kerrianne says
beautiful photos & great tips – love this post!
Johanna says
Gorgeous photos! Thank you for this post! Great info! :)