Fill The Frame

Hello and welcome back to my blog.  Today I am going to cover filling the frame. There are many advantages to filling the frame. First and foremost, when you fill the frame, you are creating a file on your card that will give you maximum resolution to work with in post. Filling the frame is a technique that I use when making pictures of people. Dont get me wrong though, not all of the images I make are ones where I fill the frame…let me explain.

Your vision is what drives composition. I say first stay true to your vision, after you have made the images that captures your vision, you might as well explore different framing of the subject.  Unless you explore as you make pictures, you might be missing out on all sorts of wonderful images.

So after you have made the shots that are safe and you know you have the keepers, try the same image in portrait (vertical) framing, then wide (landscape)…maybe tight…at an angle…move back and shoot vertically…wide…etc.  Perhaps you can try some negative space, then fill the frame; just be sure to fill the frame with some of your shots.

The look’s you get when you fill the frame are very intimate. They tell a much different story than the rest of the images you make. The reason is there are no distracting elements, there is no added information to help tell a story. The image will stand on it’s own merit. The viewer will fill in the blanks as they try to understand what the image means. Sometimes it will draw the viewer in when there is no context to define the image but the whole time they are studying the beauty of your creation. It’s hard to not be drawn in to such an intimate close up, specifically when there is eye contact through an image. Sounds weird, but I hope this makes sense.  So fill the frame!!!

Again, I am not telling you to shoot all of your images by filling the frame.  Negative space if very powerful. What I am saying is make all possible images, do not leave any out. Make as many images as you want with the setup that you made your “Vision Shots” with, but before you change the lights and move to the next look, don’t forget to make some images where you…fill the frame.

Below are some images that I cropped to show you the difference when you fill the frame. Also, I hear don’t crop in post, you should crop in camera. Well I think they are right, it saves post work, and you get bigger and more density in your files, if you fill the frame and crop in camera. With that said, I crop all the time in post. Sometimes I see something after I am in the editing phase that might look better with a different crop. I might be working within a layout for a book or album, sometimes cropping in post just makes sense.

The first image below was a test shot I took when setting up the lights at a lighting workshop I did the other day, notice I didn’t fill the frame. The Image is OK, but if I had filled the frame, it would of been better, at least in my opinion.  Judge for yourself.

Origianl Image

Crop’s



Crop (portrait orientation)

This last one might look a little different with respect to color. If viewed in Firefox or Safari the color won’t shift, but chrome, and IE the color does shift (darn browsers that dont color manage).

I just want to make a point about filling the frame. So here is the last image, which is exactly the same as the first, just cropped.

Thanks for taking time to visit my blog, Thomas Shue