You can make your photos stronger by taking a simple approach to composition.
Simplicity is the photography equivalent of minimalism. It’s a photography composition technique that concentrates on keeping only the absolutely necessary elements in the frame. You need to ask yourself what you really need in the photo in order to tell your story. If all of the elements in your photograph don’t add to the message of your image, you need to figure out a way to remove, or at least minimise, them. |
Notice how much more your eye is drawn to the subject in the right hand picture due to the simplicity of the background behind the bird.
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Dead space can be useful for this. Dead space is any space behind your subject that doesn’t have any distracting elements in. The idea is that if the space is 'dead' (or visually empty) it won't catch the viewer’s eye and take their attention away from your focal point.
By creating a photo which has lots of dead space it in, you are creating a more simple photograph. This is achieved best with no objects in the background or ones which have one general tone, colour or just one type of texture.
If there are objects in the background they could be unfocussed due to the camera's depth of field (we'll talk more about this later) and therefore would not distract from your subject. It may seem easy to achieve simplicity in a photograph, but it can take a great deal of planning, experimentation and consideration to achieve what appears at first to be a simple photograph. |
Task 1:
Watch the video to learn more about simplicity and see some practical examples of how it can be used. |
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