Why Negative Space Can Positively Impact Your Composition

by Iain Stan­ley

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To peo­ple unfa­mil­iar with the term, neg­a­tive space might seem like some­thing bad. On the con­trary, using neg­a­tive space can great­ly enhance your com­po­si­tions and make your sub­ject stand out. Here’s what it is and how to use it.

When I first heard some­one dis­cussing neg­a­tive space with regards to com­po­si­tion­al styles and com­po­nents, my imme­di­ate posi­tion was to assume that it was some­thing unde­sir­able and a blight on an image. Too embar­rassed to inquire fur­ther, I nev­er could have imag­ined at the time that neg­a­tive space is quite the mis­nomer, as, in real­i­ty, it can be a very good thing when used with both thought and intent.

What exact­ly is neg­a­tive space? In short, it is delib­er­ate­ly opt­ing to leave large parts of your frame devoid of strong com­po­si­tion­al ele­ments to help your sub­ject stand out more. Think less is more. When we look through the viewfind­er at a scene in front of us or look at an image on our com­put­ers before mak­ing post-pro­duc­tion choic­es, we have to decide what we want in the frame and what we want to exclude from the frame. Some­times, it’s impor­tant to have mul­ti­ple ele­ments in the frame to express to the view­er your rea­soned intent, but often, it’s just as impor­tant to leave large parts of the frame emp­ty to give your sub­ject some breath­ing room and let it have more impact on the viewer.

When we first begin our jour­neys into pho­tog­ra­phy, we often see things in front of us and want to include them as much as we can. We fear we might be miss­ing some­thing vital, so we pack as much in as we can. This often leaves the frame far too busy and clut­tered and can detract from the actu­al sub­ject or even com­plete­ly obscure it. If we use con­ver­sa­tion as an anal­o­gy, think about peri­ods of silence. If some­one’s on a first date, they often feel they have to keep the con­ver­sa­tion rolling no mat­ter what, lest their date think they’re bor­ing. But with friends or long-time part­ners, silence is com­fort­able and can be a good time for reflect­ing on things that have just been said.

There’s no need to pack a mil­lion things into the con­ver­sa­tion just to avoid the dread­ed silence. Silence is good. It’s a time to rest. Just like in com­po­si­tion, we want to give the eyes of the view­er a nat­ur­al rest­ing point.

With all that said, I want to give you a few exam­ples of images to let you see what I mean by neg­a­tive space.

In the image above, more than half of the frame in the top por­tion does­n’t have any strik­ing point of inter­est. The sky here is an exam­ple of neg­a­tive space. On this par­tic­u­lar evening, the moon was rather strik­ing as it rose in the sky, but I delib­er­ate­ly opt­ed not to include it by angling my cam­era away from that part of the hori­zon. Like­wise, I did­n’t shoot any waves when the sea­hawks that inhab­it these parts were fly­ing through the scene. Had I includ­ed either the moon or the sea­hawks in the top por­tion of the frame, then they would have been a focal point of inter­est in the scene or a rest­ing point for the eyes. This is not a bad thing at all, of course, but I made a delib­er­ate choice not to include them because I want­ed the sole point of inter­est to be the break­ing wave.

I should say that very often, when I use neg­a­tive space in my images, I like to have the emp­ty parts of my frame with just a lit­tle bit going on so they’re not com­plete­ly devoid of any inter­est. In the image above, I have some sub­tle streak­ing lines going through the clouds, which can just help the view­er’s eye linger there long enough to ensure they have absolute­ly noth­ing to look at except the wave.

You can see anoth­er exam­ple of this below.

In this image, the only real rest­ing point for the view­er’s eye is the surfer inside the wave. The off­shore spray fly­ing off the top of the wave and the bland blue of the sky holds no ele­ments of inter­est at all that might dis­tract the eye or let it rest some­where unin­tend­ed. I’ve used some lead­ing lines in the face of the wave to draw the eye toward the surfer, but again, the lines are not strong enough to tempt the eye away from the surfer for too long. In this way, I delib­er­ate­ly chose a com­po­si­tion where­by the only thing that the view­er can focus on is the sub­ject. There are some oth­er minor points of inter­est but noth­ing to take away from the pos­i­tive space, or the subject. 

To be clear, you can use neg­a­tive space in any type of art you want. And if you so desire, you can use blocks of sol­id col­or if you think that will help your sub­ject stand out more clear­ly. Here is an exam­ple below. 

Final­ly, I want to show you an exam­ple of an image that does not use any neg­a­tive space, just so you can see the dif­fer­ences more clearly. 

In the image above, you can see that all the parts of the frame have ele­ments of inter­est. In cre­at­ing this com­po­si­tion, I liked the con­trast between the light sun on the grass in the fore­ground cre­at­ing shad­ows and the dark­er trees in the back­ground. I also want­ed to use those flow­ers in the cen­ter part of the frame because they matched the col­or of my daugh­ter’s shoes. 

You might con­tend that the grass in the fore­ground is devoid of much inter­est and could jus­ti­fi­ably be called neg­a­tive space, but this is just coin­ci­den­tal. I did not make a delib­er­ate com­po­si­tion­al choice to leave large parts of the frame emp­ty to enhance the sub­ject. Besides this, only my daugh­ter’s legs are in that area of the frame, so the grass isn’t doing any­thing to help my sub­ject stand out. I liked it more for the light and dark con­trast between fore­ground and back­ground as opposed to the deci­sion of leav­ing parts of the frame emp­ty to enhance the sub­ject. More­over, the fact that there are oth­er things for the view­er to look at in the frame would choose grass as a neg­a­tive space rather redun­dant anyway. 

In sum­ming up, you don’t always have to clog your frame with mul­ti­ple ele­ments. If there’s noth­ing in the frame that visu­al­ly enhances the image or adds impact, don’t be afraid to leave it emp­ty. That will help your sub­ject stand out more and intro­duce you to the con­cept of min­i­mal­ism, where less is more. Please leave your thoughts in the com­ments below.