Negative Space
Several years ago, while attending a conference on computer-human interaction (SIGCHI), I was introduced to Dr. Betty Edwards, the author of “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. She was a plenary speaker who talked about using drawing to tap into our “right brain”. She showed a number of student self-portrait sketches in pairs — one before her class and one after her class. Having never graduated beyond the early “stick man” stages of drawing aptitude, I was more than intrigued. Many of the “before” portraits were, what I considered, near the top-end of my abilities, and only if I were really careful. The “after” portraits were beyond what I could then believe. I was a research scientist at the time, and had had a few accidental encounters with creativity. If I could tap into my creative side at will (which Betty implied was possible), that could be enormously valuable in my career. I decided to take the 5-day intensive course. It was an emotionally vigorous and life-changing experience. One of the serendipitous benefits of the experience was a change in my photography. The basic premise is that for many people (myself included), the left brain tends to dominate the right brain. The key to releasing the right brain from this grip is to give the whole brain a task that the left brain will give up on, allowing the right brain to take over. I learned many techniques that have helped me to “see” better (and I will touch on more of these in the future), but the concept I wish to highlight here is that of “negative space”.
We often create a photograph because there is something (some “thing”) which we want to capture. That “thing” can be thought of as the positive space in the image. All too often, I have paid so much attention to the “thing” that I have neglected the other parts of the image. (At least with drawing, you have to expend some effort to put something onto the white paper in the negative space; the camera makes no such demand on the photographer.) The left brain likes to abstract — to quickly recognize patterns and label them. This is easy to do (and over-do) when paying attention to the positive space. The left brain looks at a scene like this one and quickly and adeptly says, “Ah, yes — another leaf”. If we were to ask the brain to label and categorize that which is in the negative space, the left brain would fail to recognize much of anything (somewhat like asking the brain to tell what it sees in the clouds), freeing the right brain to merely observe (perhaps at an emotional level) and not try to interpret.
I have used this to concept to start paying closer attention to the negative space. After selecting the “thing” (the feature I want in the positive space), I begin looking at the negative space, and I try to compose the image in such a way that the shapes, colors, and eye-movement-inducing qualities of the negative space become interesting. Composing in this way tends to de-emphasize the composition of the positive space. As a result, of the three discernible leaves in this photo, not one is entirely visible — they all extend beyond the frame. Fortunately, there is enough of those leaves in the frame for the human visual system to “see” what lies out of the frame. One thing that helps me pay more attention to the negative space is to use my other (non-camera) eye to look through the viewfinder of the camera.
An interesting side benefit of this technique is that it helps me overcome one of my disabilities: a crippling sense of symmetry, which was first manifest in my Legos creations when I was 5-years old. :-)
Tip of the Week
2007.01.29
