examples of positive/negative space

think about your hand and the glass of water

How both of them have positive space (your hand) and negative space (the empty space or air around it).

Here are some other examples. Can you identify the positive space and the negative space in each image?

It helps to ask yourself, what is the subject of this photo? Similar to the subject of a sentence or the character of a book. Who is the main character in the photo? In the photos you just looked through, the main character was a leaf, an umbrella, a beach ball, and a few others. Those subjects made up the positive space. The space around them, whether sky, water or just a simple color, is the negative space.

Here are a few more examples that might be slightly trickier. Try to identify the subject of the photo and then ask yourself where the negative space is. Hint: in some of these, there is more than one subject.