Using 'white space' creatively

Hi Dolly here again.

A very quick and simple idea for today; it works equally well with digital scrapping and with paper and glue.

Do you ever have a photo that you really love but that has a lot of white space? Sometimes it is fine to cut that dead space off by cropping the picture really closely, but at other times the space is an integral part of the photo and you don’t want to loose it. But as a design concept it just doesn’t look great.

Text is the answer!

I had this fab photo of Nigel on our recent trip to death valley. I wanted it to show how tiny he was in comparison to the huge space we were in, but it didn’t make for the most exciting page.

I left all of the ‘space’ in rather than crop it, and then used text over it to break up the emptiness whilst still keeping it visible.

 
Here is another example where I have added the text in the 'dead space' onto the photo before printing it out and making a paper page.

 and another example of the same - and this could easily be done with things stuck onto the photo rather than just printed on to it.

 

Next time you are going to crop a picture tightly, think again. See what you can do to liven up that white space.

Comments

[ali]

lovely LO Dolly-
i love the 'Comfortable' one...

[Eleanor]

Beautiful, Walking the valley is the perfect example, I need to experiment with this, instead of always zooming in or cropping.
xx

[claireliz]

They're fab Dolly.
C
xx

[jayne]

Great examples . TFS x

[Lynne V]

Thanks for the ideas

[Debbie Roberts]

I am going to think before I crop. Love the white space it is really effective x

[Mandy]

Very effective. Tfs
Mandy

[Jimjams]

Very effective Karen - must remember this lesson next time I'm looking at photos.