Negative Space in Photography

Negative space in photography is one of those undesired features that purist photographers often decide to keep their distance from. But it is one of the most fantastic ways of composing a photograph due to its interesting nature of its composition.

What is Negative Space in Photography?

Negative Space is the huge presence of low impact elements, which are usually neutral empty spaces or textures. Often the center of interest contrasts sharply with those surrounding negative space areas in terms of subject matter, colour, shape, tone or texture.

Negative space, to actually become something interesting, it needs to be contrasted with an interesting subject or element. By achieving this contrast, some sort of visual balance is achieved, hence the beauty of the correct use of negative space.

Before learning about negative space, I pretty much avoided it, but after watching a couple of beautiful examples, I began to rethink about the images I was making.

The Use of Negative Space in Photography

The picture from above is my favourite image from my own work composed with a huge level of negative space, and for me, it works because even when there is so much space, the man walking by the shore is still getting the viewer's attention.

Negative space is not just a blank space, but a section of the frame that due to the presence of a smaller element, it becomes interesting. Negative space is just a name that emptiness has received, and it has nothing to do with a negative value or whatsoever.

Negative space could be:

• Very bright
• Very dark
• Balanced
• Neutral

For negative space to actually work you need to achieve a frame that gets balanced not by a big element but a tiny yet strong element in the frame, juxtaposed to the huge emptiness of the negative space. That is the essence and the magic of an image composed with important deals of negative space.

One way of making an image more interesting is by cropping it out, leaving just the essential elements for the composition to work.

Examples of Negative Space in Photography

Negative space is just a small topic inside the whole universe of composition, if you are just beginning in photography and you don't know exactly where to start, well let me tell you a very good new, you need to start with composition, since it is one of the most valuable attributes any photograph should have in order to be meaningful.

If you are interested in learning more about composition, then perhaps you should take a look at this guide. Mastering composition requires practice indeed, so why not starting today folks?