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Evening Sunset, Snake River, Oxbow Bend, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
Sony a7RII, Sony 16-35mm, f/16, 1/4 sec., 100 ISO

1. Empty Spaces The Blogserie Bar
2. Empty Spaces The Blogserie Budget
3. Empty Spaces The Blogserie Beginning

During my workshop image review sessions, I obviously see all types of compositions. It is part of my job to point out both the strengths and weaknesses (along with other aspects pertinent to the crafting of a compelling image) that can help the student learn to create stronger and more efficient compositions.

My training comes from art classes and years of reading and incorporating ideas from other artists and editors. I like to say that there are no rules in art but there are certainly important time-tested guidelines that can be incorporated into many compositions.

Watch the new video 'EMPTY SPACE' from James Arthur here.Get the single here: the new video 'JAMES ARTHUR WITH TY DOL. If you want to filter out empty (spaces only) and NULL values, use. Select. from myTable where LEN (FirstName) 0 - not NULL and not spaces only. See this example.

For this article, I’d like to discuss the difference between Negative, Empty and Dead Space and how each helps or hinders a composition.

NEGATIVE SPACE

In art/photography, negative space is the empty area around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space occasionally is used to artistic effect as the “real” subject of an image.

Magazine editors love negative space as it not only helps to keep an image balanced, but also allows for an area that type (both headline and copy) can be overlayed.

As an artist (photographer) I employ negative space in the majority of my images. There are times that I am shooting strictly textures or patterns and it is not needed; however, one should always keep the thought of effective negative space within the forefront of one’s thought process when composing.

EMPTY SPACE

When one becomes unaware of negative space, oftentimes I see images with ineffective empty space.

Empty space is simply that, space that adds no meaning to the image, does not help balance the image, nor holds any visual interest.

In the image (above), had I not brought out the foreground rocks under the Snake River, I would have had a lot of empty space the served no purpose for the rest of the image. In fact; roughly two-thirds of the composition would have held zero visual interest. Sure, one would know it was a river but it would have been very uninteresting.

By revealing the rocks, the eye now has a reason to gravitate to that portion of the frame. I even toyed with cloning out the clump of grass along the shoreline but decided to leave it as it visually came to life with the sun’s warm light at sunset and served to connect the vibrant section of the scene to the bottom of the frame.

DEAD SPACE

In general terms, dead space is the area within a composition that is behind the main subject – in this case the sky. Had I placed a human on the right quadrant of my composition looking left, then the space behind my person (who would now become the main subject) would be my dead space.

One can’t help but have some dead space within a composition, but one should be aware of it and try to minimize it.

I limited my “uninteresting” sky to give the viewer just enough sense of where it began in relation the Mt. Moran and tried not to squeeze it too tight against the peaks – there must be some breathing room or the image feels pinched.

If I told you that every square inch of your frame was worth a million dollars if it served a purpose – either positive or negative space – you would certainly not waste any territory within the composition. Think of this the next time out and spend a bit more time questioning all aspects of your image before and after clicking the shutter.

Empty characters

Empty Spaces The Blogserie Bar

Empty characters, blank characters, invisible characters and whitespace characters. They look like a space, but are in fact a different (unicode) character. They can be used if you want to represent an empty space without using space. Let's say you want to use an empty value in a website or application, but spaces are not accepted. For this situation you can use one of the characters on this site. For example, sending an empty message, or setting a form value to blank. If the application filters out other unicode characters then the characters on this site might not work.

Sending an empty message in WhatsApp

WhatsApp does not allow to send a blank messages using spaces. To work around this problem, you can use the blank character on this page. It is seen as a character different than space, but it looks the same. You can use it to send a invisible message, or set your WhatsApp status to empty.

Method 1 - Copy with a button

Click the button below to copy an empty character to your clipboard.

If this doesn't work on your device, use method 2.

Method 2 - Copy manually

Empty Spaces The Blogserie Budget

If the first method does not work for you, try this method. You can test if it works below.

Select and copy the content of the blue-bordered textarea below.

You can use the Select button under the textarea, and then copy the selected text manually.

Test it

Paste the empty character in the textarea below to test it. If it works, then the grey text should disappear.

Unicode empty characters

Empty Spaces The Blogserie Beginning

Are you looking for other empty or invisible characters? Below is a list of different whitespace unicode characters. Select and copy them from between the blue brackets in the example column.

More information

Check out the Wikipedia page about whitespace characters.

If you are looking for more information about Unicode empty characters, check out this page.

Not what you were looking for? Or maybe you have a question, a suggestion or feedback? Please let me know! Contact admin