SPACE & SIMPLICITY

Less is more when you want to add impact to your composition

YOU don’t always have to fill the frame with the main subject or include loads of different elements in a scene to produce striking compositions. In fact, it’s often better to isolate a single focal point or leave space around the subject to give it room to ‘breathe’. This approach to composition will help you produce more relaxed, contemplative images, because the extra space helps to give the viewer more time to ‘find’ the subject in the image without the competition of other elements or focal points in the scene.

Finding this perfect simplicity isn’t always easy. You will need to identify the dominant subject and then isolate it from any distractions around it to produce a really striking composition. To help you isolate the subject, you can use a couple of techniques that aren’t immediately associated with composition: long shutter speeds and shallow depth of field. These enable you to blur distracting elements around the subject, producing a much stronger and simpler composition than if there were too many other distractions visible in the frame.