A quick read.
I’ve been conducting workshops since the early eighties, and over the years I’ve been known to occasionally spout out something fairly intelligent. These quips have morphed into what I now affectionately refer to as my “Personal Pearls of Wisdom“. One of my favorites that I’m always using in my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet is “make it a quick read”.
If there are those out there that shoot primarily for themselves, then you need not worry about whether or not the viewer gets what you’re trying to say-since no one will ever look at your photos. If you like shooting for the enjoyment of others, then you need to make sure that the message you’re trying to get across, is indeed getting across. In the first of my series on this Pearl of Wisdom, I want to address the importance of the use of negative space to help make your photos a quick read.
Everything that’s not positive space (areas that have mass) is considered negative space, but the area that I’m referring to is that area of negative space that borders the positive space, defines it and gives it meaning. What do I mean by that? I mean that the area immediately surrounding the two people in the above photo is the negative space that defines the arms, legs, and bodies. Without that very important area, you wouldn’t be able to tell where one person ends and the other begins. Therefore, the negative space has defined the positive space (the two people} and has given them meaning-it has made the two people…two distinct people.
Remember that when you’re shooting, whether you’re going after negative space to define the positive space or simply trying to get your thought process across to the viewer, you won’t be around to explain yourself. Unless you’re going for an abstraction in which you want different people to get different messages, make it a quick read. Just imagine yourself in the mind of the viewer so you can see what he does.
Btw, the negative space is no accident. I have a walki-talki on the belt of the man on the right telling them what to do so I can make the two people a “quick read”. They’re about forty dollars for the pair, a handy addition to your bag of solutions.
Once again, the next time you’re out shooting, be sure to notice and use to your benefit the area that borders all the positive space in your composition.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
