Project 11 : Balance
I found Project 11 : Balance very difficult.
The brief was to find half a dozen shots in your own archive and decide how the balance works in each one.
Determining balance is given as the size and position of the various subjects in each shot from the centre of the photograph against each other. So if you have a large central subject, you would balance it with a small off-centre object.
The examples given in the course notes all balance. However, looking through my own photographs, I tend not to have anything in balance. Generally I only ever seem to have one subject in the frame and on the occasions when I add more, I try to put them symmetrical.
However, here are some examples from my archive, which are roughly in balance. I tried to use a combination of portrait and landscape shots.
The Baltic, Gateshead
35mm f/11.0 1/400sec ISO 400
Tram in Prague
8.5mm f/8.0 1/220sec ISO 160
Aloft x 4
40mm f/10.0 1/200sec ISO 400
Can you hear me now ?
300mm f/5.6 1/60sec ISO 400
Lincoln in Dalivision
37mm f/6.3 1/80sec ISO 400
Let battle commence
127mm f/10.0 3/5sec ISO 200
To conclude
Images tend to be more pleasing to the eye if they have good balance. However, as the course notes states, sometimes it is more effective to create some visual tension and interest by having things unbalanced.
As I said earlier, I tend to automatically avoid balancing my subjects, but in future, when composing shots with more than 1 subject, I will consider shifting my scene to balance out the composition.