Visual weight
For other examples:
Guy Bourdin p. 23
This image doesn’t have the busyness of the last. But even with all that space, none of it seems unnecessary. Everything is exactly where it should be. It has the same sense of cold order as the landscaped industrial park it depicts.
Here Lewis Baltz felt the visual weight of each element. He didn’t just see a garage door surrounded by a brick wall and an area of tarmac. Instead he reduced everything down to two-dimensional shapes and tones.
Don’t see the world as it is. See it as a photograph.
Notice how much ‘heavier’ the dark ground seems compared to the light wall, and how this has influenced the amount of space Baltz has given them in the frame. See how the grey of the garage door is counterbalanced by the diamond of white cut into the tarmac. See how the space between all of these elements, and their position in relation to the edge of the frame, creates absolute equilibrium.
Feeling the visual weight of your scene is a complicated balancing act, but your eyes are already pretty effective weighing scales. You measure visual weight when deciding where to hang a picture on a wall or when arranging food on a plate. All you have to do now is apply this already honed skill to your photography.
West Wall, Business Systems
Division, Pertec, 1881 Langley,
Costa Mesa from ‘New Industrial Parks’
Lewis Baltz
1974