From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Symmetry

Symmetry

From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Symmetry

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One of the easiest ways to achieve a balanced image is to look for symmetry in your composition. A perfectly symmetrical image is really sturdy in terms of balance. It's just a rock-solid balance that can be very pleasing. It's very ordered. Your eye knows immediately where to go. Watch what happens if we break the symmetry, if we throw things off just a little bit by panning the camera. It just doesn't work anymore. The image is out of balance. It's far less comfortable to look at, our eye gets a little more lost. But now look what happened, if we keep going in that direction, until I am positioned right on one of the third lines. When we do that, the image comes back into balance. Now it's not the same balance as a perfectly symmetrical image. This one's got maybe a little more tension in it, because it's not so perfectly symmetrical, but it is balanced again. So, when working with symmetrical content, you can combine that with what…

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