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Negativity is often thought to be a bad thing but really is it?
i mean if you didn't have a negative terminal on your battery of your car it wouldn't start
in the morning you'd be late for work,
your boss would sack you.
If there weren't negative temperatures
i wouldn't be able to enjoy a lovely ice cream like this on a sunny day,
and if you didn't have negative space in photography
you wouldn't be able to enjoy pictures like this, or this, or this.
So what is this negative space thing, how does it actually work?
and what subjects does it work for?
these are all questions i get asked quite a lot, as you've seen in those photos
just now you can use negative space with people, you can use it in landscapes, you can use it in all
sorts of things,
probably the best thing to do is go and have a little wander around and see
if we can find a couple of negative space shots, somewhere a little quieter,
and i can explain how it all works.
Here's a lovely piece of negative space,
i mean look, you've got all that stone work
and you've got that graphic element
of the bench down here at the bottom,
i think that works really really well, it's a nice quiet sort of an image,
the stones are all sort of higgledy-piggledy and the lights changing
with the sun shining across them you've got the shadows and then you've got the graphic
square straight lines of the bench down here,
so that's a great
piece of negative space.
You can use it by placing someone into it, or
just as it is i think it would work really really well as an image.
It's a shame about this
fire hydrants sign we've got here but
that's what Photoshop is for,you can remove things like that,
but also
you could just put
a person in front of it,
so if you were out doing a fashion shoot type of thing
you can always put someone in front
of that or a portrait
and all of a sudden you've lost the hydrant.
uh...
and you've just got
a nice
sort of a portrait-y picture and it's quiet and it's got space in it,
now i know you're saying
but mike you're really really tiny in the picture we can't really see you
but that's the point, human beings are really quite vain
our eyes are drawn to human beings
and so you'll look straight to me,
now if this was an image you were going to print and put large on the wall it'll look absolutely
fantastic because
the fact that I'm small and it occupies a big space it gives it a really quiet,
peaceful
sort of a nature.
So the things to look for are
enough light,
big open spaces
graphic elements they work really well
and they give you this lovely quiet peaceful
sort of an image.
let's just have a quick look and see what it would look like if
we crop this shot in tight so that i am filling frame from sort of top to bottom,
see what that would look like.
So even though this is still a really nice image because of the human
shape,
the contrast with the stone
and then the graphic of this bench, it's a much much tighter, it's much more
portrait-y rather than sort of scenery-ish.
I kind of miss the big open space even though this looks rather good.
Let's just let it breath again and go back.
Argh there we go i can breathe again.
I do just like this sort of
empty spacious quiet sort of a feeling, i don't even like being in a small room
with the dole could affect with the door closed so
this is a bit of me.
So with out further a do let's go and get a camera and go and see if we can find
some little things, I'll just talk you through
how to shoot a bit of negative space with your camera.
Negative space isn't just for big open spaces such as boats on the water
or a tree on a hill top,
you can use it for much smaller more delicate items as well, i kind of like these
little flowers sitting here in this stone work, i think they look amazing, i love the
little lilac-y colour going on
against the sort of grey of the stone.
So how'd you go about it?
well the first thing you've got to do
is to find yourself
some of these little flowers
that have got a bit
of space around them, i mean these ones aren't much use at all are they because they're all sort
of
bunged up, they've got other flowers all around them.
Blasted thing is driving me nuts.
Anyway i kind of like these
ones,
just here, you see this little clump of flowers here they're all on their own.
I'm just gonna get that to fly up there, there we go.
These ones they're all on their own down here,
we've got plenty of space
all around them, now these
flowers here
they're not going to be in the shot because you're going to use your focal length a little bit longer
and just kind of crop them away
and there's plenty of space there.
So the shot I'm thinking about
in my head is a landscape view like we did down there with the bench,
this is an upright shot, so we're gonna have the flowers small and
at the bottom and then we're going to give them space to breathe up above
and i think I'm gonna have them fairly central but right down at the bottom
with lot's of space up here.
So let's go through it with the camera, how do we set this shot up?
well think about it, the first thing is
do you need lots of depth of field?
no, course you don't,
there isn't any depth going on here, you've got what the front of the flowers there and
the stone work maybe an inch behind them so
you only need a little tiny bit of depth of field so you don't need a little tiny aperture,
but i would go for a middle aperture if you can.
I'm going to shoot this using aperture priority because i just find it so much easier.
so i got the camera switched on, I've got my white balance set to
well actually sunny because
it's kind of sunny even though I'm in shade i can put it in shadey but I'd rather colour correct it
afterwards.
Aperture,
um... more interested in the composition
and that will then give me my aperture so i can then get the shutter speed.
So let's have a look at my composition,
look through the camera
i can just sort of move backwards and forwards
and i want the lens longish
with a sixty millimetre focal length
on a dx sensor, for those of you who are going to worry about that sort of thing
just move your focal length till it looks right, don't start worrying about numbers
too much.
okay,
that's nice, I'm going to come back a bit more i think
and try and get it some more space.
Here we go.
And that little blaze of colour against the stone is really going to work.
okay, so now I've looked at that i now know that i need about a sixtieth of a second
sorry a sixty millimetre focal length,
so I'm going to need at least a sixtieth of a second shutter speed
to ensure that i don't get camera shake and a blurry picture, so looking through the view finder
i can see that f five point six I've got one hundred
if i
uh...
six point three gives me
on-the-record on trade and eighteen of a second,
i know the shutter speed is
going to be fast enough
to freeze the
movement of the camera, so i can get the shot nice and sharp.
There we go, iso i have got set at
two hundred and fifty,
if i went down a little bit surely image quality would be a bit better but the shutter speed
would be
a little bit slower and i don't want that to happen.
So I'm all set up and ready to take the shot,
so the settings are on,
the sunny white balance,
two hundred fifty iso,
my exposure is an eightieth of a second at f six point three,
now i just
kind of move the camera around
now to put it in position, if i just look at it how i see the world with my eyes
they're right in the middle like that,
that's really boring isn't it?
so i just look at it in the middle and then tilt the front of the camera
right up it's this up tilt motion,
like that and that, move my little flowers to the bottom,
i have put my
single point auto focus
at the bottom of the frame
so that it's going to focus on the flowers when i press the shutter button.
So I'm now
lining it up,
single point auto focus, press the shutter, there's a little beep it has focused and
squeeze the shot,
and there you go.
It really is
that simple. Now
that's a nice delicate little sort of an example why don't we go out and see
if we can find a larger more open space and I'll talk you through those shots as well.
We were just driving along to our
final location where i wanted to show you a final shot and
i spotted that crane up on the sky liner up there.
Can you imagine what it's like to be all on your own on top of the tower crane,
it's a great opportunity for a little bit of negative space,
now you see these boat masts, they're a little bit annoying because they're
near the bottom of the crane,
so you need to think
two things here, one raise yourself up
so that we can make the mast appear lower and also this has to be shot whilst the sun
is against the crane, it's the light that's going to make it work, so i need to get
my skates on.
So get high up, I'm gonna climb up on top of this bit of wall here, come with me.
There we go, that's better already.
Now what's the shot,
again i don't need loads of depth of field all i need is a fairly
flat depth of field, I'm going to use a middle aperture of about f eight,
I'm still using aperture priority
I'm just gonna line up the shot
and get that out of the way,
here we go.
Focus on the crane and then we're making little movements
of the zoom to sort of crop out the tops of the mast
whilst the sun is still out,
who put this stupid red balloon here. Here we go.
Right,
focus on the crane raise the camera up a little bit
and we've just got the crane against the sky
waiting for a seagull to get out of the shot because i don't want him in there,
go away seagull.
There it is,
like that.
Awesome, that's a really lonely up in the sky kind of a shot,
maybe a crane driver feels like that i don't know
but it's a bit of negative space.
Let's see if we can find that last shot i was on about.
I do seem to like a sturdy bench don't I? this is turning into
mike likes a sturdy bench show.
There's a reason that I'm here and I'll tell you that in a minute but first let's
just revisit a few negative space images,
think of a sun set,
now a sun set is probably negative space in it's most original form
because are you actually photographing the sun or
are you photographing the space around it?
all those magical colours going on in the sky and the clouds,
if you didn't have the space around the sun you wouldn't capture them
and it probably wouldn't work quite so well.
This picture
of a little girl laying on the step of the beach hut,
now i could have come in much much tighter on to layla but
then it would just have been a likeness of layla
but by giving her some negative space and including a little bit
of the structure of the beach hut, the sort of regularity of the straight lines
it's kind of confined layla within her own childish ideas and dreams and thoughts,
it's giving her that space which makes the picture quiet
which is what layla was being at that moment.
Let's just go back to this one again,
the one with the two little boats on the water,
this is one of my favourite pictures actually,
the original shot to which i
took
looked like this, now
as you can see
the moss and the background are a terrible distraction,
i wanted this image
to be er, a quiet, peaceful image because it was so quiet down there
and i just loved the reflection of the little boats on the water.
But the moss and the background they just kind of made it noisy
and they didn't need to have the sky included
so by tilting the camera down a little bit
we managed to lose that noise and put the boats at the top
and that is very
very quiet and peaceful indeed, it's also noticeable because
of the composition, the boats are at the top not the bottom,
i love this picture,
quite a few people have said to me it's weird because the sky is in the wrong place,
that's also
another lesson to be had in the fact that there isn't really a right or a wrong
composition, there's the one that you like, if you like it then it's brilliant.
that one bernie and as far as i'm concerned
to what the military here well
the original plan looks like we have some sunlight going on
and i was thinking about
the background basi the skyline on the bench in the foreground i want to show
you another little thing with this as well
the co-author flight plan to most men go to the book now the nevermind
let's go ahead
on the set myself up
and we'll have a look at it lexi what's gonna happen
i drank so we've got a shorter top
we could all brands
we've got lots of energy spikes
so that's the beginning internet
still think about it
where your position things
are now we've been for it it doesn't hurt to just kind of look at this once
again
i think the short look an awful contest
if we got
the bench lower in the frame sanju prisoner light beer with some without
you be able to see the horizon devotee to say that it's a lot more since
college
might just about
contractually and that there are few breaks in the cabinet it dot i have to
be false will talk with you this bit now in the country will get the shot in a
minute
third let's have a look at the shop again by putting the bench lower
and lighting up the horizon
with the state at the bottom
missing about my looks like about the wife uh... so that you can compare it
today we go
we've now got
the composition reef
we've made the banks slightly closer into the middle of the picture which is
something which will permit the he was telling us not to say
also when you work in the negative spicy it'll still on myself to have something
much lower down in the friday
you can put it at all but we did with the body
if you knew that was pretty late
so when we got going on here we've got the graphs down the bottom
if you can see through the muck the horizon is running just above the top of
the banks popping round about here
the reason you would be test with things like that it if the horizon line
collides with this harsh line of the bench somehow it just doesn't work quite
so well you need that little pieces separation twenty-two going
we have the fat out it would be absolutely glorious is we've got some
lovely texted in the sky lit it is just not going to happen i don't think
because he continued to help you imagine things
do you want to take this picture what kind of exposure without using the
reason i'm saying that because i know a lot of you would also
the correct exposure is the one that works for when you all
i can tell you what exposure to use because i don't know the light situation
if the song was shining right now it would be a very very different
experience will be very very different exposure
we needed a middle aperture because there is no, well there is a lot of depth
of field.
and that's why your depth of field will be big anyway,
it will then set your shutter speed according to the aperture
you've chosen,
and then you set your iso according to the shutter that you get
because you want to make sure your shutter speed is fast enough that you don't
get camera shake if you're not using a tripod, these are the building blocks of
photography, they kind of clunk together like lego bricks
and by understanding what they do you can
build your own picture in your head and then create your camera settings.
Something that works really really well when you do have a bit of a dull scene like this
is to introduce something man made into it,
because it gives your eye somewhere to look, it gives you
a point of focus, if you like
particularly if something with a nice bright vivid colour,
so all i can say to you is
i hope the breeze starts blowing so the blasted thing goes up right,
but enjoy the view