Category: Plants

This is the fourth day I’m taking up Patti’s pilotfish challenge: Lens-Artist Photo Challenge: #66: Filling the Frame. In today’s post I’m showing how “negative” space can indeed be negative in the sense that there is no image in it, but sometimes a larger negative space can show off the subject more effectively than a “larger object/smaller negative space” would.  And sometimes the two choices show off the subject equally well, but the two versions of the photo end up looking like two entirely different photographs. The differences in how much of the grey background is included shows two different ways to “Fill the Frame.”

Here are my two examples. The flower subject is not only the same in both examples, but they are, in fact, the same photo. I used my Nikon DSLR with a 105mm macro lens.

The first photo is closely cropped.

The second photo is actually the original one – no vertical cropping was done.

I happen to like both versions, but I would chose a different one depending on what I was planning to do with the photo. If I was wanting to use the flowers as a pattern for a border, I would obviously go with the top version. I would also chose the cropped version if I was wanting a long, narrow photo to hang on the wall.

But the original photo before cropping – the bottom one – has it’s own charms and tends to be my favorite. By allowing more of the soft grey background to show, this larger version has an element of serenity to it that I love.

So for me, the answer of how much negative space to include on this particular photograph depends on where and how I would be planning to hang the picture.

But I would very much like to know your opinions. So leave some comments. The more, the merrier!

~Hannah