Creating breathing room

In Finding Beauty we approach creating quiet, minimalist images from several different directions.

One of the ways is by creating breathing room, which is not necessarily the same as negative space.

How do you create breathing room?

Finding a quiet image in a busy scene often means to choose one specific subject and to find a way to isolate it. Some of the ways of doing that are:

Move around the subject until the background is clean.
Frame tighter….but not too tightly.
Change image orientation (or aspect ratio).
Take a step back and zoom in.
Use a shallow depth of field.

Examples of quiet images

Below are examples of quiet images from some of the students in the Finding Beauty class.

What ideas can you glean from these to apply to your own photography?

“Brit taught me to look for ways to distinguish and distill the qualities that define the beauty I see until what I am left with is a minimalist expression of that beauty. Great class!” — Dorothy Rosenbladt

“Brit urges students to make images mindfully, to strip away the non-essential to find beauty in detail and simplicity. She urges us to go further and find beauty lurking in another part of the image. Her critiques are delivered with care, kindness and understanding of the level of skill of the student.” — Anne Forbes

“I had never given much thought to negative space or to finding pictures inside of a picture. My eyes are open to so many new ideas.”— Ann Kern

SIGN UP FOR A CLASS WITH BRIT HAMMER

Finding Beauty

Authentic Photo Stories

Celebrate Your Life in Beautiful Images

Photography Essentials

Amazing Travel Photos Made Easy

** No post processing skills necessary for any of Brit’s courses **

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT BRIT

Brit Hammer is an international award-winning photographer, bestselling author, and a celebrated artist whose work has aptly been called “fresh and optimistic”.

Her students love her “combination of extensive and well-organized photographic design principles…intuitive eye, patience, enthusiasm and holistic nurturing [because the results are] unbelievably incredible and inspiring student growth.”

Visit her website at brithammer.com

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“I just wanted to thank you for another wonderful class. I have to confess that each week when I read the new assignment, my first reaction was mild panic and a deep certainty that I would not be able to produce anything worthwhile that fit within the parameters you had set. But before I knew it, the ideas started to flow, and I quickly became obsessed (no, that isn’t too strong a word!) with exploring the possibilities. I can honestly say that the photos I produced in response to your assignments are among my favorites. Thanks for bringing out a creative side I didn’t know I had!”

Barbara Geiger
Understanding Color

“Thank you so very much for this course! It’s allowed me to take the blinders off and present my images for what I want them to be without being a slave to the “reality” of the camera. I would also add that in conjunction with your printing course, this has been the most useful course I’ve ever taken. Your notes are more than comprehensive and your comments and critiques are direct, clear, and always directed to the improvement of the art.”

Bill
After the click

” I want to thank you for this class and for your patience and availability to answer all of my questions. I have learned very much through this class. I have used LR in the past, but mostly for editing images. I now have a better grasp in the organization of my images, an even better understanding of editing images, and an understanding of the value of presets. I still have a lot to learn, but this has put me on the road to be able to improve my photography. Again, thank you! ”

Dale Yates
Lightroom Quickstart

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