Exploring Negative Space
Ruminations on Negative Space
Negative space is, quite simply, the space that surrounds an object in an image. Just as important as that object itself, negative space helps to define the boundaries of positive space and brings balance to a composition. Source
I have always liked art that emphasizes black space and silhouettes, art that moves the viewer's focus from the details of the main object itself to the shape and the details of the space that surround the main object. To me, this kind of art is transformative. It has the power to change the way we see things.
In life, what defines us? Of course, we like to think of ourselves as unique and independent individuals who have developed the personalities and identities that we have through choice, well-informed and careful evaluations, and through our own unique life experiences. And to a certain extent, this is true. Yet, what is it that surrounds us? How have we been impacted by the very visible yet not easily seen things in our lives: the people that surround us, the culture we were brought up in, the geography of the places we live and have lived in, the views of our parents, the books we have read, the movies we have seen, the news that we listen to, the whispers of conversations that float into our ears while we are waiting in line somewhere?
The negative space in our own lives, space which surrounds us and helps to define us, is not generally easy to see and be aware of. It takes effort, practice, and sometimes even special techniques like meditation, or serious loss and tragedy to bring this space forward into our vision and into our consciousness.
Negative space is something, though, that I think we should take the time to try to be aware of and to try to understand. It is a space that we should seek out. Should we wish to truly make changes to ourselves, and the personalities and identities that we have, possibly even to the societies that we live in and the world that we share, we should take the time to try to understand how we are being shaped by that which surrounds us. We should spend some time exploring negative space.
Great post and I especially love that bottom picture, really like evening shots!!
Very thoughtful post. I agree with daveks, the last image is just lovely. Very nice composition.
@daveks and @runrudy, I really like how that bottom picture came out, too. It was a lucky shot. It was also what I wanted to feature with this post. The woman's figure in the picture intrigued me. I have another version of the shot which is much lighter, where you can see the woman in detail and it has a totally different feel to it. Exploring the differences in these two pictures is what I initially set out to do with this post, but I wasn't sure how to go about doing it and ended up writing about a totally different topic. Here is the other picture.
Hey there, sorry for the late reply. I was offline all weekend. This new image looks better than the other image. Usually I can just download an image and it will tell me what camera, lens, and other info about the picture = metadata. I don't know if it is your image hosting site after you uploaded but there is no metadata for the image in question or this new one you just posted.
What you can do is investigate these images on your computer. If you are on a windows OS. Right click the image file on your computer and then select "properties". A few tabs will open up and you want to click the "details" tab. In this will show you all the settings the camera was on to take this image.
That way you can compare and see the differences in the settings of the camera for each image.
Hope that helps. Cheers.
That's interesting. I had no idea you could do that. I have just been taking these pictures on an iPhone because I don't have a quality digital camera, and I don't have a good scanner to upload the negatives of the film prints that I have.
You like the second image better? I go back and forth. They really feel like two different pictures to me, so I don't know which one I prefer.
Wow, beautiful thought! I was just meditating on the reality that we are almost entirely composed of negative space. That the world we live in is in actuality a lot closer to vibration frequencies than the solidity we perceive. Love your work, definitely evokes the effect you were aiming for!
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've been taking a lot of pictures in the evening lately and after editing and looking at them, this line of thought came to me.