My Love Affair with Negative Space
by: Lindsay Craig
Can I make a confession? It's not a huge life-altering confession, in fact I am guessing the majority of you can relate to this confession, not all of you because there are bound to be some of you crazy people in this group who just have their stuff together, but I am not one. Anyways, shall we just get on with it? My house is a mess. Like dishes and clothes and toys everywhere and for the love of God, why are the couch cushions never on the couch, like ever? It's just the way it is, I wish I could say I run a tight ship and that everything has a place and everything is in it's place or however that goes, but I absolutely cannot. When I first started getting into photography, and I mean at the very beginning when I started noticing that my images (which were always super cluttered) actually had backgrounds (and foregrounds), the mess really bothered me. It may have been vain, but I didn't want people to think our house was a disastrous war zone of toys (and this was 3 kids ago) and clutter, and so I started paying attention and I began sweeping the toys or the laundry or the dishes out of my frames. My life was (and still is) very messy and chaotic, but I don't like my photos to be; which is where I believe my love for minimalism in photography came from and specifically the use of negative space.
So what is negative space? Basically, it is the area or space around the main subject in your photo. And, why would I want to use it in my photography? It seems almost counterintuitive, you have a subject of you photo, and you want to draw interest to that subject, you want your viewer to see and focus in on your subject, it's why you took the picture to begin with, right? Negative space is a great compositional tool that adds visual interest to your image while enhancing and drawing the eye to your main subject.
I'll show you what I mean, take the image above. I could have cropped in around my boys to try to focus on them and their connection, and it would have been a good image, it would have gotten my point across. However, once I stepped back and added in extra space around them, it became emotional, it became powerful, it told a story.
Can you feel the difference?
I think the most obvious form of negative space is just expanding a plain background, whether it be a wall or the sky or a simple black background. In this image, it was the carpet as I shot from above. You can achieve this look by stepping back and including your negative space in camera as you are shooting. Here I scaled a big armchair next to where he was napping so that I could shoot from above and include a larger amount of the floor than I would have been able to from a different perspective. I wanted to compose it this way to bring emphasis to the fact that he had fallen asleep on the floor and to draw attention to his sweet sleeping position and those hands!
You can also add negative space in post. This image was shot tight and I was having a wee bit of drone envy so I decided to expand my canvas in Photoshop and clone (and clone and clone and clone some more) in some extra water to get that far away drone feel. Also, the negative space here adds a carefree, summery vibe. Like he's got all the time in the world. The straight out of camera image feels tight and uncomfortable.
Can you feel the difference?
I think my favorite use of negative space is to emphasize a fun or unique crop. If you follow me, or know me at all, you already know that I love a good crop. I also love the way adding negative space to that crop adds an extra lay of interest a fun. And really, what's the point of doing something if it isn't fun?!?
I could have gotten in tight and focused on his feet (I have an unhealthy addiction to baby feet) and the details of his hands washing them, I was going for the details after all! But adding the negative space of the water in front of him enhances the story of him being in the tub and that he is in fact washing his feet which is actually drawing your focus in more deeply to the details. I remember shooting this and I did start closer in and was bored by it, it was lacking something so as a last ditch effort, I backed up, well, actually got up on the toilet if we are being honest with each other, and cropped off his body and included in the bath water as negative space.
This one, again I wanted to focus on the details of his hands drawing (that tongue was pure luck!) and was playing around with angles and perspectives. I used the floor in the foreground as negative space this time and it helps bring the viewer right in to see what he is working on and how hard he is working at it.
I wanted to capture him riding his bike in that dappled light. I knew I wanted to include the shadows in my image and so I waited for him to scoot over (can't quite reach the pedals). I liked the crop and the negative space (even though it wasn't a plain background) I think both aspects compliment each other while adding interest and depth to the photo.
Negative space doesn't always have to be plain. When I think of negative space, my brain initially envisions a plain background around a subject, but that doesn't have to be the case. Oftentimes, including the surrounding scene in your image gives a greater sense of what is going on. Here, my subject is looking through the railings in some pretty light and I could get up close to him and you'd get the story of him looking out, but I decided to get back and include more of the scene. When I did that, not only was I including negative space to bring focus to my subject, but look at all those lines (another great compositional tool as a bonus) and the light that would have been lost!
In this image, the light was shining through the holes of a landscape wall and making this polk-a-dot pattern on the main wall of this building. I had my son stand there and shot to include all the dots as a repetitive pattern in my negative space. The wall itself would have been enough to be a good negative space image, but the pattern of light adds another layer of interest making it even better.
I liked the way the light was coming in through the big window here and had my oldest son sit on the bench. In this image, the widow acts as negative space, drawing the viewer down to my son. This image also plays with scale as you get a sense for how large the window is.
Another example of when scale and negative space work together is in this image of my two boys adventuring off into the woods. I wanted that little people in a big world feel and you can just see the trees towering over them. If I had taken this shot closer in, you would have lost the feeling of how grand the forest is, and even though they take up an incredibly small part of the picture, you can feel their connection of holding hands and going in together.
When in doubt, shoot the sky. I love a good sky and I love what a good sky can do for an image even more. When I am outside shooting and needing something a bit more, I angle my camera up and include as much sky as possible.
I had been driving by the wild flowers daily (pre covid era) and kept telling my daughter that we needed to stop one of these days to grab a few pictures. Well, we did and I was taking pictures of her more straight on and there was too much going on, too many bushes and clutter, that her little bouquet wasn't standing out, so I said, "when in doubt, shoot the sky!" (okay not really, because I just made that saying up right now, but it's what I would have said if I had known the saying back then). I had her stand and reach for the sky and I got down low to omit all the busyness going on at ground level. With that shift in perspective, you get this nice sky as negative space and you go from a clutter-filled busy image to a calming simple photo that draws you in based on it's simplicity.
Can you feel the difference?
My son here is picking flowers off a large vining plant, including more of the plant in my image creates negative space while adding to the story. Plus the flowers are pretty and I liked how the yellow and green played together (a bit of color theory!).
Telling the story of being plugged in more and more these days. The crop and negative space help tell that story. The negative space has bright vibrant colors and pretty light that add to the over all aesthetic of the image.
Birthday pictures documenting this guy turning four. Using the wall as negative space helps the viewer come to focus on him and just maybe, the mom in me wanted to show that even though he may have reached "big boy status" that he is still just a little guy in this great big world. Always my baby. Our emotions are tied to our work and adding in a little extra room in the frame can help convey those emotions in an entirely different way than a tighter shot.
I highly encourage you to get out there and experiment with different ways you can add negative space to an image and I want you to see if you can feel the difference. Try moving around and changing your perspective, try thinking outside of the box as what you can use as negative space. It doesn't have to be shoving your subject agains a plain wall and using that as negative space (but it absolutely can be!). If you are shooting and not getting the results you want, your image feels boring or like it's missing something, your story isn't as strong as you'd like, or the emotion isn't there, I want you to try to see if you can add in more room to your frame and if that adds the missing spark to your image. Not all images need negative space and we have seen other compositional tools that are great at taking an image to the next level that don't include negative space, but I want you to take some time and play with it to see when and where it makes sense and how it changes the feeling of your image. Please tag me in these images, I'd truly love to see what you come up with!
Happy shooting!
xoxox,
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