Old bunker on the Taiwan coast.

A photograph has three essential components, those being the frame, the positive space and the negative space. The frame is easy enough to understand – it’s what the image is bounded by. The positive space is the subject of the image itself and the negative space is most simply described as the empty space around the subject. Usually we think of what’s in the photograph as being the most important but what isn’t there can often be equally important to a photograph.

Negative space as a concept comes from the art world, and when it’s translated to photography, there’s a little disagreement about what is and what isn’t negative space. To some, negative space needs to be completely empty and free of texture, features and elements. To others, texture et al is okay as long as it doesn’t draw the eye and become a key component of the image. I’ll let you make up your own mind as to which definition you prefer.

The use of negative space can be a key compositional tool that evokes a sense of scale and size, of loneliness and solitude, and can also work to help anchor the subject and redirect attention to it. Negative space can provide balance to an image as well as context.

A lot of photographers look to always fill the frame with the subject, or if this is not possible, to crop the photograph after the fact so that the final image gives the appearance of a filled frame. In some cases, this works well but variety is the spice of life and you’d do well to experiment a bit with negative space. Play around with it and see how it works and begin to develop an intuitive feeling as to when to use it. Pay attention as you go and get a sense of when too much negative space begins to take away from the photograph rather than strengthen it.

The environment that the subject exists in is often just as important as the subject itself and negative space gives the photographer a way to incorporate that. Give it a try.

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