From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Tonal balance

Tonal balance

From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Tonal balance

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Balance is one of the most ephemeral, kind of slippery compositional ideas that we're going to cover in this course. It's also probably the most important. If you had to pick a single word to define composition, balance would be in the running. It's a very difficult thing to define, it's also the most critical thing for you to understand about composition. We've looked a lot at ways of creating balance through the use of geometry, weighting elements in your scene against each other. There's another way of balancing an image though, and that's through tone or lightness. Right now, we've got a whole bunch of bright on this side of the frame and that's creating a certain amount of weight, and so we are balancing that with a whole bunch of dark on this side of the frame. Light against dark can create a sense of balance. You can also go more symmetrical and do light against light or dark against dark. We've also got a rhythmic thing going on in this frame. We've got light and then dark…

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