Avoiding a void? Why?
By Dirk HR Spennemann
20 Dec 2008
Ever seen art books? Noticed the wide white margins and the liberal use of the empty space? Good design is not cluttered but clean and mean. Yet, many of us suffer from cenophobia, the fear of the void in their images. 'I gotta make use of that space," is the mantra in may people's minds. When this happens to photographers, the resulting images are at best very busy and at worst totally cluttered.
But why? It doesn't have to be that way....!
Be brave and learn to LOVE the void... it provides a tranquil backdrop and directs the eye, it focusses the mind to the subject matter. Use it a deliberate design tool when composing an image!
To my mind, off-center placement of simple objects and settings works best, with the rule of thirds playing a major role. But even centrality can have artistic merits...
Be brave and try...in the digital world nothing has been easier than trying out different takes..the hardest is to step out of your comfort zone and embrace the open expanses of the void...you might even become a cenophile... ;-)
4 responses
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Dirk HR Spennemann said (20 Dec 2008):
cenophobia/cenophilia is not to be confused with
.
centophobia/centophilia = fear/love of new ideas, and
.
xenophobia/xenophilia = fear/love of strange/foreign people (and things) -
Aubrey's Oma gave props (20 Dec 2008):
you got my vote!
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Zerina Phillip said (21 Dec 2008):
This is a very interesting essay. I see you use the rule of third in many interesting ways in your photos. Power, Night, Leaving and the flower. I was taught this principle from my teachers.
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Dirk HR Spennemann said (22 Dec 2008):
Thanks for comment, Zerina.
Yep, the rule of thirds (1:2) is an almsot overwhelming one in aesthetically balanced images but so is the golden rule (1:1.6, more used in architecture) which you can easily achieve with cropping...
I could have used the rue of thirds with the image 'Three" very easily, by cropping at left. But the image image would have been very different..I chose centrality on purpose..
