Negative Space

I really like the Lens-Artists challenge that Amy threw at us this week, The Negative Space.

When I begun to take the photographic topic a little more seriously and started studying it, this was one of the concepts that took me more time to understand.

But little by little I think I’ve found it very interesting.

What is negative space?

Positive space is the element or elements that we have photographed. It is what is usually called as the main subject, which will be the most important element of the image. The negative space is the rest, those “empty” spaces or gaps that remain between the main subject, the positive space and the edge of the image. It is a space without important information for photography, because if you have it, if you add information, it would become positive space.

Although it can be defined as “empty”, visually it has presence, it is not a hole in the photo. It can be a sky, with its colors and clouds, or even a full but blurred space. The important thing is that in this space there are not elements that distract, but that accompany and underline the function of the subject.

One extreme of this concept is minimalist photography, in which very few elements usually intervene, generally appearing a lot of negative space.

Negative space can be created by blurring, the main subject must be focused and the negative space out of focus, so that the viewer does not focus on it.

Posted as part of Lens-Artists: Negative Space