Visual Tension

This is an excerpt from a workshop I taught recently, one of only two photos I took during the day. I made it to demonstrate a concept. The students were all shooting the model head-on and centering her in the frame, pretty simple stuff. I wanted to demonstrate a bit of outside-the-box composition. The concept here is based on adding the bright area at the opposite end of the frame from the model. The eyes of the viewer would normally find the primary subject (the model) in the composition and then stay there. The eyes however have a natural tendency to be drawn to the brightest area in an image so in this instance the eyes have two elements competing for attention across the frame and a path to follow between them. This sets up visual tension in the image and adds a bit more interest.