Balance in Composition
You've probably seen photographs that catch your attention, and you wonder why all the elements of the photograph are "where they ought to be." It's odd to say that, since in nature things simply are where they are, but in a photograph, this is what we call balance. The photographer has arranged all the visual elements in the image so that they seem like they're where they're supposed to be. When we think of balance, we often think of symmetry, where one half of the image is mirrored by the other half. As we discuss in the posts on the rule of thirds , this style of composition often divides the frame into two halves and it therefore splits the attention of the viewer. A better way to think of balance is in terms of what you may remember from high school physics, or at least from seesaws in the playground growing up. In the above diagram, a heavy object has to balance a lighter object on the line by moving closer to the fulcrum. When you were a kid, ...