Avoid unnecessary empty areas in a photo

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Good composition is a carefully considered collection of image elements brought together with an attractive division of space. Make sure you do not have unused empty areas in your image.

Everything you include in the frame contributes to the composition. You should not include anything that you do not want in the image. Otherwise, it is like a wrong note in a piece of music.

But it also means that you should not introduce unnecessary emptiness into the composition. That is like a silence in a piece of music that disrupts the rhythm. You can have empty space in a photo, but it must add value.

So make sure you think carefully about the placement of the image elements in the photo. Especially when you use a foreground, make sure it says something. As an example, I have this field with a village on top of a hill

The grass (grain?) has been mown and rolled into bales. At least, if the grass is grain. Maybe it was another crop. If you know what it is, tell us in a comment below this post.

The field is empty and the rolls are somewhere in that area. That takes up one-third of the total photo. That is not a problem, but there is nothing that makes this area interesting. The thing that could be interesting is terribly small in the image. That is a shame.

You can solve this by giving the field more content. Choosing a different position changes the foreground, making the rolls part of the composition. It also prevents that rather meaningless emptiness in the image area.

You can do this in many ways. By including dandelions in a grass field, for example, or by using a path as a leading line. Look carefully at what can be used and use it to your advantage.

By thinking carefully about how to fill the foreground, you can make the photo richer. If there is nothing that can fill an unnecessary empty area in the photo, consider keeping that emptiness out of the frame. Zoom in, or use a different viewpoint.

Always be critical about what you include in the frame. It must have a reason, it must say something. So always ask yourself why you are including something in the composition. This applies to a foreground too.

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