Center Weighted Photos
This is a center weighted photo. The puppy is centered in the middle of the frame with equal amounts of space on either side of him.
Occasionally you’ll see that I participate in a blog circle with other dog photographers from around the world. Each week we are given a topic to blog about and show photos. At the end of each post is a link to another dog photographer. If you click the link at the bottom of each post, you’ll go through the blog circle and get to see other photographer’s cute dog photos.
Since we are all scrolling more these days, looking at dog photos seems like an okay way to spend some time, right?
This week’s topic is “center” so I’m going to talk about center weighted photos.
I center a lot of my photos. That means I put my subject (the dog) in the middle of the frame.
I will center them if the dog is taking up a lot of the frame (which I do frequently) or if I don’t love the background in my photo (which also occurs fairly frequently.)
My first photo shoot of this year was with a litter of nine golden doodle puppies. The photo above is one of my favorite portraits from the photo session. I mean, who doesn’t like a puppy in a pail, right?
If you scroll through the gallery photos on my website, you’ll see that most of them are centered. This is a conscious decision.
And do you know what? Even though I center most of my mine, I love photos that aren’t centered. I love photos with “negative space.”
Negative space in a photo is defined as the space around the subject in a photo that is unoccupied. It’s blank, unoccupied space.
Here’s the same puppy in a photo that isn’t centered. I like this look… do you?
I love photos with negative space that are done well. I like to do this in photos but I rarely post them so that makes me want to ask the question why. Why don’t I post them very often? I take photos that aren’t center weighted, I just don’t post them that often.
Posting photos with negative space takes creative license and I’m concerned that people looking at the photo might not get that it is intentional.
I think another reason why I post center weighted photos a lot is because of Instagram. The square Instagram crop just screams center weighted photos to me.
Any other photographers have this dilemma with their own photos or am I the only one?
When I photographed these puppies, we let them wander around the studio so some were in the center and some weren’t. In this photo, he just happened to be walking towards me and was in the center of the frame. When I use buckets when I’m photographing puppies, I always have the bucket in the center of the frame.
Do you have a preference about the subject being in the center of the frame? Do you even notice? Am I totally overthinking this? I’ve been known to overthink things on occasion. ha
This is a blog circle and next up is Terri J Photography, capturing photos of your pets in and around Toronto. Click the link at the bottom of each post and you’ll get to see the other photographer’s posts.
PS I wish I could travel to Canada. I miss Vancouver one of my favorite cities in the world. If I were photographing a dog there, I would definitely use a lot of the background and most of those photos would not be center weighted.