I’m going to lump a few things together in this secret but they all have to do with giving your photo a sense of balance.

The first thing on my list to give your photo a sense of balance would be symmetry. I know this is not a motorcycle picture but it was at a motorcycle rally—Bikes, Blues and Hot Rods. Does that count? If you can split your photograph in half and get the same on both sides you will have a beautifully balanced photograph. But motorcycles don’t lend themselves to this kind of balance as well as cars, so what do  we do?

Symmetry

The other thing that can give your photo a sense of balance is a repeating pattern or element to your photo. Repetition is a key element of design. Checkout Robin Williams book, The Non-designer’s Design Book for other elements of design that can actually help you with your photography as well.

Repetition

You can also think of balance like a teeter-totter. If you have a strong visual element on one side of the photo you need another on the other side to balance things out. Here is an example where the girl on the right is balanced out by the orange cone on the left.

Balance

Remember what we are trying to do is create a sense of harmony in the photo. But this rule can be broken, just like all the other composition rules. Here is a good example of where harmony was not my goal and I intentionally tried to create unbalance in the photo.

Unbalanced

The point is you need to know the rules if you’re going to break them. By knowing the rules you can better decide how to get the emotion you are going for by breaking them. The photo below already has a lot of tension in it with the motion blur, but we could add to that tension by cropping the photo in an unbalanced way.

Balanced

Unbalanced

Give it a try with your photos and see how the emotion of the photo changes.

By Tim Wemple © 2010
www.BikeRallyPhotography.com
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