Tip 20 - Find Balance

composition

Jan 10

A good composition is typically simple (as mentioned many times before) and balanced. This doesn’t mean your image has to be symmetrical. It’s the balance of your content, so you don’t feel one side of your image is too “heavy” and the other side is too “light”.

Compare the above two images. The 2nd one leaves a big blank space on the ground, or to the bottom of the image, so the image is a bit unbalanced. It’s not necessarily a bad photo, but could be better in terms of achieving balance. By placing your main subject in the blank space (1st image), you could achieve better balance.

If you take photos of the nature (see above image), sometimes the clear sky leaves the image unbalanced - all your content is at the bottom of the image. Try to include something (eg. tree branches in this example) to fill up the empty space on the top part of your frame in order to achieve balance, especially if the sky has no clouds or patterns and completely blank. You could apply the same approach to your travel photos or outdoor portraits (see image below).

What exactly is the balance? You may ask. Well, there is no precise measure and the definition could be totally personal and subjective. It’s like some people need just 6 hours sleep and can achieve work life balance even they spend more than 12 hours on work daily. To others, this is totally not acceptable.

Between the two images above (I had to photoshop them to make this case), which one is more balanced? I personally like the one on the left as my toddler is looking toward the right, so the lower hill behind him plus him on the left sort of balanced the higher hill and the space he’s looking into on the right.

Last but not least, as mentioned before, you certainly can break the rules after learning the rules - that’s probably most creatives do.

Street photography or photo journalism, for example, oftentimes might have far more complicated composition. The interaction between people, or between people and surroundings, in the image are the main story. Even amidst the chaos, a good photograph from the street can still achieve certain balance, instead of throwing random subjects into the frame.

For photos with minimalism style, you can certainly just put a simple subject in the corner of a photo and leave a big blank space elsewhere. But there’s always a good or bad version of such creation - a good one provokes emotions, imagination or thoughts from your viewers, a bad one is… uh… just bad.