Once again I was surfing through the channels, gliding non-stop through each number and name, my trusted remote comfortably positioned in my hand, and my thumb firmly resting on the button. For one brief shiny moment I stop on a series of old but still famous television commercials. As chance would have it I just happened to stop at the beginning of an old commercial for Alka-Seltzer. It ran in the sixties and it brought back memories sitting around the television watching programs that it sponsored.
Later that evening while lying in my bed after a romp down the perverbial memory lane, it began to conjure up an entirely different meaning. A concept that I had been talking about just that morning through one of my video critiques I make daily for those online students in my BPSOP class.
It’s also what we talk about every morning in my critiques during one of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops and photo tours I conduct every year in different cities all over the place. I call it Visual Relief.
I think one of the biggest mistakes I see is that photogrphers are in too much of a hurry to shoot and move on and as a result there’s no consideration for the area around their subject or subjects; a recipe for confusion and distraction. There’s no place for the viewer to rest his eyes, especially when the subject is placed too close to the edge of the frame. 
Those of you that know about my 15 Point Protection Plan and my Border Patrol and are diligent about using them will usually catch this and apply a quick remedy; creating some Negative Space around the subject or between the subject and the edge of the frame; in other words allowing the viewer some visual relief.
It’s so imporant to place as much emphasis on the negative space, the space that borders the positive space. It helps to only to give visual relief but it important in defining the subject as well.
How about now?
When you look at the above photo I hope it will demonstrate what I mean by giving your image some visual relief. Look at how I created negative space (and therefore visual relief) by using the sky…down to the small area that defines where his elbow ends and his waist begins. It’s the same thought process in the other two photos.
So, my fellow photographers, I know you’re just dying to see how this post came about: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxjb2UJZ-5I
🙂
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime and we’ll toast with an Alka-Seltzer Martini.
JoeB
