Nicole, this is a hard subject, but then again, very challenging. I searched some articles and found some very useful stuff and I think it would be good to list some of the principles here as a reference. So, here they are:
Balance is the tendency of the eye to split the picture in 2 halves and seek to balance them. Artist usually ilustrate it with a seesaw - the bottom frame of the picture is divided in 2 halves and represents a sesaw. Then, they measure the 'weight' of the objects in the picture on both sides according to their atributes and position.
The object has more 'weight' when it is:
- positioned further from the center
- (horizontally) placed on the right side ( it has more weight than the same object placed on the left side at the same distance from the center!)
-(Vertically) in the upper part of the picture (it has more weight than the same object placed in the lower part of the picture)
- isolated
- intensely interesting
- of regular shape (object of irregular shape tend to be 'lighter')
The impression of movement and direction given by lines tend to upset the balance based on the object atributes.
There is more about the balance along with examples on this page (the balance section is on the bottom of the page):
http://photoinf.com/General/NAVY/Pho...on_Balance.htm And these are rules for B/W photos only. Colors again have 'weights' of their own.
Here is another article on balance including colors:
http://photoinf.com/Image_Balance/La...-_Using_it.htm
I'm posting a couple of my pictures in the next post
