I've got some more demonstrations of our topic on "Forward Motion---Negative Space---Stopping the Eye---Creating Tension."
In this photograph there's several elements that are detracting from the lovely bride. The first thing you'll notice is the lamp above her head and then the blurred area in front of her. Both are capturing the eye and distracting you from the beautiful look on her face. With a bit of cropping and a little tweaking, we can put the focus back on her.
I went even further and straightened the photo a bit and took the white streak out of the paneling against the back wall. When editing a photo you want to take the horizon line and place it along the line provided on the grid for straightening the photo. In this case I used two separate lines, one vertical and one horizontal. The vertical line was the door frame behind her back and the horizontal was the frame of the window. It became a case of splitting hairs between the two. After "squinting" at the photo---which you should always do in order to spy out any distracting elements---I made the decision to take out the white streak too. If we wanted to play up the back light behind her we could crop it even closer and really draw attention to her face and eyes. Try cropping the photo in different ways and see which best suits your composition. There's more than one way to present it depending on your point of interest and sometimes it's merely a personal preference.
I think you can see right off the bat the many elements that are crowding the subject of the couple enjoying a pretty sunset. There's just so much going on in the foreground and the background that the overall composition is entirely too cluttered and the subjects are lost in it. I think if the photographer had positioned him/herself in front of them with the setting sun behind him he could still have captured the warm, golden light---sacrificing the view of the water and the sun.
Notice how pleasing this photo is. It's calming and the blacked out space around the orchid flowers are only interrupted by supporting elements of buds and leaves. There are only three main colors with nothing to distract you. The repetition of the shape of the petals have soft edges, as do the buds and leaves. Overall, a very calming, peaceful composition.
This is an example of a secondary subject competing for your attention and notice that they're almost equal in size and shape and it causes obvious tension, being a blatant distraction from the woman in the photo. Shift over and reframe your subject. If you want the statue in the photo make sure it's not as prominent or of equal size to your subject. I would definitely throw it out of focus too so it's not competing for your attention. It might even be best to photograph them separately.
There's a nice balance of positive and negative space in this photo.
Other than being overexposed, there's so much noise in the negative space around the bride and groom that I think the best thing they could have done was move them against a much more quiet background, maybe the stone wall, basically anything to quiet down the space around them. There's a circle with a light pole in the middle of it and it's positioned right next to the bride.
Be mindful of those distractions around your subject or focal point. It only takes a few seconds to shift your position, or, to re-frame the shot from a different perspective. You have to consciously make those decisions at first and as you train yourself to "see" differently it'll become second nature after long.
I'll try to find some photos of panning and stop-action. If anyone has some please feel free to post them.
A dear friend of my niece's has a great eye for composition and balancing negative space, light and dark elements. All I did was to help with the final editing. My niece, Becky, is due February 14th and I'll leave you with a beautiful photo of her and Kevin!
