Ah, negative space. The red-headed stepchild of photography. In its simplest description the area around and between objects in a picture, negative space has long been misused by photographers, which has led to awkward images, to say the least.

Ideally, it should be used to enhance an image by creating better-composed pictures as well as allowing viewers to see sizes and shapes more easily.

This concept has a long-standing tradition in everything from design, sculpture and art to architecture and, yes, photography. To master negative space in your pictures is to make an extraordinary photograph out of a mere, ordinary one. It’s really too bad that it’s not understood and put into effective use by more photographers, but this will change now.