November 2024, Balance and Symmetry

News about happenings at Deliberate Light and photography instruction (see Digital Photo Academy). My views on this month’s photography topic: Balance and Symmetry. To get these newsletters by email a month before they are posted here, go to the DeliberateLight.com website and click on Newsletter Signup.

NEWS

Upcoming Workshops. Workshops will be offered by Digital Photo Academy on December 7th, though I am not scheduled to teach again until January 7, 2025 at 23th Street Station in Philadelphia You can sign up here if interested.

· Mastering Your Camera Controls (1.5 hours) – intended for DSLR/Mirrorless/Compact cameras (smartphone tutorial available separately)

· Composition in the Field (3 hours) – walking tour around the venue with instruction and hands-on practice composing photos (bring any camera)

New Photo.

Contours. The Hostas get full and green in late summer. It is when they bloom in my backyard, and when they are most delicious to foraging deer. When I go out to shoo them away, they look at me in annoyance and ignore me. They must think they are apex predators or something. Looking at the lush green leaf, I almost want to try it myself.

(Rose Valley, PA, 2016)

For a more detailed, enlarged view and to get it printed, see it on my website.

VIEWS

Balance and Symmetry: important compositional elements because we humans have a tendency to feel that balance is not only attractive but also just feels right. Balance in a photograph means that the visual “heft” on one side of the photo is balanced by an equivalent “heft” on the other side placed at approximately the same space from the other photo edge. In this example, the two sets of runners balance each other nicely.

Whereas, in this version, shifted to the right, the image is unbalanced with all the space behind the runners and seems less appealing because of that.

An extreme form of balance occurs when the image looks as though one half might be the mirror image of the other half, as in the following photo of the Art Alliance building in Philadelphia.

In this photo of the pool at the Hearst Castle, we note that the symmetry is both horizontal and vertical.

A related topic that I have discussed before is that of the Rule-of-Thirds (October 2023 newsletter). The ROT tells you to place important visual elements on the lines and corners of a 3 x 3 grid for maximum appeal. In fact, in the above image, the two statues are placed in the top two corners of the imaginary 3 x 3 grid and their reflections in the bottom two corners. The evidence for the validity of this rule is not exactly convincing, so you do not need to follow it slavishly, but it can be helpful.

Carl Finkbeiner

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