Exercise eleven: Balance

This represents the first reflective exercise; requiring me to trawl through previous shots to see whether the images possess balance (or not!) and how this is achieved.

The majority of my previous shots have been family portrait shots but I hope I've been able to identify a sufficiently diverse set of images. The idea being that I may naturally achieve balanced compositions for one genre and not another.

50mm, 1/80 secs at f/2.5, ISO 100

I thought I'd start with a relatively simple one - a shot of my Grandparents at a recent family wedding. This one's a favourite shot and captures the character of both subjects - my Gran being more outspoken and noticeable and my Grandad slipping into the background whenever he can. And although in this shot he takes up more of the frame balance is achieved by the fact that it's my Gran that's in focus and is therefore more prominent.

18mm, 3.2 secs at f/22, ISO 100

Arguably my favourite ever landscape shot (well, that I've taken anyway) and my first long exposure. Two points of interest in the frame being the bring arch/waterfall and the boulder in the bottom right hand corner. There is a strong relationship courtesy of the flowing stream, leading the eye from the first point of interest to the second (which also portrays a contrast between liquid and solid). And although each point is diagonally opposite each other, balance is struck.

11mm, 4 secs at f/18, ISO 200

The first two examples contained two points of interest, so in addition to introducing a range of genres I also wanted to increase the complexity by introducing a third point of interest. This shot was taken on a recent shoot at Manchester's John Rylands Library.

Inititally the eye is drawn to the central light but then sweeps up to the arch at the top of the steps on the left, and then the past the arches down the steps to the right. The image therefore has a natural balance.

50mm, 1/80 secs at f/1.8, ISO 400

It took me a while to get to grips with this image as there are a number of aspects to it. Running from right to left and in decreasing importance/priority is the monkey in a seating position, the monkey lay down and the texture of the net. These aspects do not suggest balance yet intuitively I felt it was.

Realisation came when I stopped looking for physical subjects in the frame. So in this instance, although the texture of the net is a worthwhile inclusion, it's the lack of a subject on the left that gives the image balance - in other words, the space that the primary monkey is gazing in to. Should he have been looking to  his left the shot would not be balanced.

45mm, 1/80 secs at f/5.6, ISO 160

Following on from my observations of the previous shot I chose a shot with similar traits (not subjects!), so here's another with a significant amount of space. Once again, based on the physical elements of the scene the weight of the shot is skewed to the right hand side. However, it's the space the subjects are peering into that gives it balance (and makes the viewer strain his/her neck trying to peer around the left hand side of the frame). What struck me by this point is that I'd not made conscious decisions about the balance that compositions of this nature gives... it has been natural until now.

160mm, 1/640 secs at f/4.5, ISO 100

Again, a difficult one. On the face of it there's one subject positioned heavily towards the right hand side of the frame as the bushes over to the left are of no interest. Rather than the previous two images achieving balance because of the space the subject(s) were looking into, this one is balances by virtue of the direction in which the bird is hurtling towards (between the bushes on the left and the tree). This is also emphasised by the outstretched wing pointing towards this space too.

I found this exercise so valuable and really enjoyed analysing previous shots, not least because I was able to determine whether my images had natural balance because I'd certainly not been conscious of balance before now. I was really pleased to find that far more often than not my images had balance.

Even after reading the exercise I was looking for physical attributes of an image to determine whether it had balance yet what I discovered was that space can provide balance, as can selected focus/clarity.

From here on in I intend to be much more conscious of this aspect of composition.