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Ian Howard

Negative Space - The art of photographing nothing!

People talk about negative space in an image but what is it and why is it important?



Negative space has been used in art for hundreds of years so its no wonder that its has become an integral part of photography.



But what is negative space - It is the area that surround the positive space or focal point of your image.

  1. It provides space for the image to breath

  2. An area of nothing enhances the area of something

  3. It leads the eye

  4. It can generate tension and contradiction in an image

Getting the right balance is the issue!


The rules of photography all still apply ie placing things on the thirds

Negative space is easy to generate with sea and sky within an image.

You can use the negative space as the area to place

  1. a shadow

  2. a texture

  3. contrasting colour

  4. complimentary colour

follow up video

Follow up challenge

Go out and look for negative space images, it a great way to fine tune your creative vision and can be quite challenging (to go out trying to photograph nothing !)



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