#NEGATIVE SPACE LUMINOUS LANDSCAPE FULL#

Edge sharpness is enhanced by darkening the dark side of the edge and lightening the light side of the edge, just a tiny amount say a pixel widths or two. Luminosity is a trick of the eye, much like digital sharpening.

Where the main subject just glows and jumps off the page.

#NEGATIVE SPACE LUMINOUS LANDSCAPE FULL#

But what your aiming for is creating something that is full of luminosity. You need an interesting subject, you need the right lighting, you need supporting considered backgrounds, you need to compose the dark or negative spaces. Obviously this can’t be done in isolation. Once I started really concentrating on the composition of the luminous parts of the image, using the highlights to control the movement of the viewers eyes through the photograph or to the main subject within the photograph, my photography stepped up to another level of mastery. Most of these images have very carefully considered and composed tonal arrangements. Don’t believe me, go and look for yourself. The ones that consistently win competitions, the ones that hang on walls, the ones we remember and the ones that we take that we still love many years later. The same is true of a photographic master piece. After an afternoon see if you can find patterns in what you are attracted to and how they work. Take a notebook and pen and scribble down your thoughts, make drawings and diagrams. To do this exercise properly I would suggest 15 - 30 minutes per artwork. Stand in front of a great work of art that you like and see if you can figure out why it is working for you. Well worth a trip to your state or national gallery to study photographic composition by studying painting. These paintings are so grand and enthralling that they are best seen in real life. When we find interesting things our eyes slow and enjoy the journey. When we look at these masterpieces from centuries ago, when camera obscura was the nearest thing to a camera, our eyes flow through the highlights flowing through the painting, then as we explore deeper into the painting we explore the mid tones and finally we may venture into the darker tones, but probably only briefly or with our imagination. Chiaroscuro is about creating form with the dark tones and light tones. They create an illusion of form, shape and depth with chiaroscuro. Leaving just the highlights, which they narrow down, to steer the eye through the painting. Composing with the dark tones, figuring out the negative spaces around the brighter subjects. I am talking about oil painters here in traditional painting. When we look at these masterpieces from centuries ago, when camera obscura was the nearest thing to a camera, our eyes flow through the highlights flowing through the painting. The first of which goes onto the canvas is the dark tone, in huge swathes and bold big brushstrokes. Painters are taught to flesh out the composition in large dark tones. My favourites will more than likely be different tomorrow. My favourites today are Olive Cotton, Ruth Bernard, and Imogen Cunningham. I used to spend as much time studying the masters of the canvas and paintbrush as I did on the masters of photography. Masters of this are the greats like Rembrandt and Caravaggio. Painters worked this out a long time ago. In a luminous image the subject appears to glow. I like to call this ‘the dance of the highlights’. How my eyes are lead through the image by the highlights. When I think of a beautiful photograph that is full of luminosity, I am considering how the highlights glow and are separated from the other tones within the image. They have luminous subjects or luminous lines and tones. I believe that most great photographs have one consistent compositional element, and that is that they are luminous. An artist will think of how bright the lightest tones they will add to their painting. A printmaker will think of luminosity in terms of how much of the paper tone will shine through in the final print. In photography we tend to think of luminosity as how much light an object reflects, we measure luminosity with light meters, usually the amount reflected off the subject, though this isn’t really technically correct. Technically, luminosity refers to how much light an object emits.

Negative space luminous landscape