Lessons
As mentioned in other notes, establishing some negative space patters may be way forward. As would establishing positive space patterns.
For the first one - this is an excellent example of cast shadow with the protruding element on the bottom. Typically I am casting to the rather large areas, e.g. the entire concave area of a blossom. In this case there is a protruding petal. Protruding petals often unbalance a composition, maybe because they are usually at the fridge of the shape. Regardless, this shows how protruding elements can be viewed as candidates for strong cast shadow. And in this case, it creates a medium sized stroke that breaks up the border of the frame nicely.
Likewise, the other element is also a variant of something fairly common - a cut in to the center of the flower. Usually these can be pretty awkward in a solo shot or with loosely bunched flowers. This shows how by tighter grouping, blockier, irregular shapes can be created.
It is also possible to consider those cut ins as medium grain cuts to the borders if they don’t make sense as internal focals.
So in the second on there is - the foundation is a sort of parallelism - which would be problematic, and there is a shape jutting from the right side awkwardly. It is solved by balancing it with a very different shape on the opposite side. They both break up there respective negative space in very different ways. In sum, with fairly linear flows, it may help to opposing elements and build the composition around balancing those and how they create alternative negative space. The third has the same issue with parallelism, but does not solve it as the second does.
The long series shows how the energy of the image is overwhelming defined by the negative space, rather than the subject - which is identical across shots.
Others shows the impact of a minor change to the asymmetry of negative space.
One of pairs - the white flowers - provides a very strong comparison of weak vs strongly asymmetric negative space - yet having the same quality.
The ones with the lines - these show that prominent or uncommon negative space is not necessarily good negative space if it is not meaningful. If I could try that again, I would try to make that the intentional focal of the image, as in a river. But a single bend would not be sufficient, it would have to have some scale and complexity to work. It would be a potentially strong and unique image though. The last of that series shows how cropping is use to minimize the negative space to create an entirely different focal.
Negative Space and Depth
The last two - these are solid cases of bottom negative space as use to create depth, and a good interval overall.
