area. To those of you that don’t believe anything that goes against your college
textbook, put a black dot on a white piece of paper. Is your eye drawn to the
light (the white) or the shadow (the black dot). Your eyes are drawn to the area
of greatest contrast—again, the smallest area that is in contrast to the largest area
in the frame.
Controlling the contrast between the background and clothing helps us to
control the viewer’s eye when they look at an image. Ideally, the face should be
the area of greatest contrast. This can be accomplished by pairing lighter cloth-
ing with lighter backgrounds (so the face is the darkest area in the portrait) or
pairing darker backgrounds with darker clothing (so the face becomes the light-
est area in the portrait). In either of these scenarios, the viewer’s eye will be
drawn to the face and their attention will be held there.
In addition to controlling the viewer’ eye, this is one of the principal meth-
ods for hiding and disguising the flaws that all paying clients have and don’t
want to see. Imagine you are creating an image of a young lady in a white dress.
If she is larger girl and you know she won’t want to notice the outline of her
arms and upper body in her head and shoulders portrait, you would photo-
In both examples, notice how your eye is
drawn to the circle. This is because it is the
area of greatest contrast with the rest of
the frame.When a subject in white clothing is pho-
tographed against a white background,
the focus stays on the area of greatest con-
trast: the face.