Project: Photo // Rule of Space

This week's focus: Rule of Space.

Our eyes naturally follow the direction of a subject's gaze or anticipated movement in a picture. So it creates balance and intrigue to leave more active space in front of the subject, rather than behind. If the subject is positioned with more dead space behind him, it looks like they're about to walk out of the picture, which makes us feel more tension rather than harmony.

My rookie self would've centered Bellatrix's eyes and whiskers in the middle of the picture... but after reading about the rule of space, I see that it's more natural to have her on the left, since she's gazing toward the right.

Recently, I got into cold brew coffee. It requires a small bit of prep (about 12 hrs prior), and I'm still trying to figure out proportion of the cold brew concentrate to the water/ice that's added right before drinking, but it's amazing... super smooth and subtly sweet. Yummm!

I think this one qualifies as "direction of movement." At first, I had it cropped where the trickle of coffee was centered, but it seemed to be asking for more active space at the bottom... so after a couple drafts, the final picture was one with more space at the bottom (where the cup is).

What is Bellatrix is looking at so intently? She's gazing toward the left and a bit behind me, so there's a bit of tension here, since she might be entranced with something that might jump out and attack me at any second!

It's interesting that though we see no specific details of the man, this picture still seems pretty harmonious. I think it's because we're able to see the view that he sees. He had just gotten a cup of coffee at Starbucks so he could simply be walking out to his car, enjoying the view, or enjoying the drink in his right hand. Or perhaps he's just thinking about "absolutely nothing," as guys just claim they often do... right?

A couple thoughts:

1. Perhaps this was a more advanced task better suited for a future week, since it required dynamic subjects in motion. These photos turned out to be more difficult than anticipated because I typically needed more time to figure out how to freeze motion without it looking blurry. And then it was also challenging because I really wanted to snap a quick picture so that my subjects wouldn't realize I was taking creeper photos of them...
2. I'll only be sharing my favorite pictures from the week, not all of them. This will limit the sheer volume, along with the dull ones... and everyone's happy! ("Everyone" being me and my husband, who's my only other reader, haha.)