Diamond5

Another technique! Framing. I love the effect that framing gives a photograph. It really puts an emphasis on the subject as well as directs the viewer's eyes where the photographer wants them to go. So how do they create this?

Picture from photoaxe.com

It's basically exactly what it sounds like; you use something to enclose or frame part of the picture. I remember in my high school class, we would have to go through magazines and find different examples that expressed different techniques. In the Better Homes and Gardens magazines, door frames were always an easy framing example. The photographer would shoot a staged room, but they would include the doorway or the threshold to the room. Another example I saw in National Geographic magazines was rocks or caves. The photographer would be inside or outside of the cave and take the picture including the entrance of the cave. Here's a picture for better understanding. 

This is not a technique I use a lot. I have a few pictures, including the one below, that portray this. in the photograph below, I wanted the subject in the very center and I wanted the balance to be symmetrical to give it a repetitious look. I didn't originally want the fence in the foreground to be blurry, but I didn't have a lens that could keep it in focus while I was so close. However, I actually like the effect it gives the photo. At first glance, you can't really tell what all the white in the picture is, but when you look at the background, the viewer can tell from the opposite side and the shadows that it is that cross-hatched fencing. 

I wanted this picture to have a lot of negative space because it really captures attention and draws eyes in. I also wanted it to have a lot of contrast so the whites would be bright and the blacks would be dark. Something else I love about the negative space is how it creates this illusion of five diamonds with different subjects and textures and divides them symmetrically in the photograph. That is the reason I named it Diamond5 (also a play on leet speak because "5" can be used as an "s"). I like how it turned out and I like the effects the composition has on the eye.