At first, my process of creating images involved a great deal of intuition, which countless times led me nowhere. Though I miss that time when pictures would come up effortlessly, adhering to design principles began giving me more interesting results. In this post, I’m sharing three principles I go by when creating images. Compositional Balance, Visual Tension, and Color Harmony.

Compositional Balance

Compositional balance is a design principle I first began to digest through painting and art history. Following the rule of thirds is a way to achieve visual balance, but sometimes it can deliver repetitive results. I attempt compositional balance by managing negative space and positioning the subject so that it relies on a counterpart within the frame to make the main subject more prominent.

Visual Tension

Leading the viewer's attention and locking it to specific areas results from visual tension. Some ways to achieve visual tension are using leading lines or contrast (whether it's in the form of light against shadow, scale, and distance). Saturation also comes into play when working with visual tension as it affects tonal value, color temperature, and even repetition.

Color Harmony

Color (or the absence of color) often times can turn something ordinary into quite extraordinary. I’m mindful of the color wheel when I want to enhance the mood of an image. The truth is that it may take me a lifetime to fully understand color, so, in the meantime, I choose to keep things simple with complementary and monochromatic color choices.

This is my roadmap to work on images. They give me direction and simplify my process, but they’re not set in stone, nor I always try to include them all at once. When intuition fades, design comes to the rescue!