Wildflowers in the Yosemite high country, Yosemite NP, California. I positioned the camera so the foreground flowers would have a good left-right balance across the bottom of the frame, while pointing the camera at the mountains and keeping a good left-right balance among the three prominent peaks. I also kept the camera low enough to get close to the small flowers and make them look bigger, but high enough to see the pond in the middle ground.

Claudia and I have stayed close to home this summer. Luckily our home range includes some beautiful territory. We’ve made several trips to the eastern Sierra and Yosemite high country to photograph flowers and summer thunderstorms.

You can find wildflowers all over the Sierra during summer, but they tend to be scattered widely around the landscape. Dense patches and mixes of flowers are less common, but they exist – at least in some years, in some spots.

Despite our paltry winter snowpack, this has been a good year for finding some of those denser patches of flowers. I’m not sure why, since dry winters usually yield fewer summer wildflowers. But I’ll take it.

Three of the accompanying flower photos from this summer are wide-angle, near-far compositions with flowers in the foreground and mountains in the background. The others show patterns of flowers, or a closeup. But one thing they all have in common is that they’re carefully balanced.

Balance is one of the most important elements of composition, yet people seldom talk about it. I’m not sure why. Is it so obvious that there’s no need to discuss it? Not in my experience. In workshops I’m frequently talking about balance with students, and pointing out imbalances in compositions in the field or during image reviews. I hope if I do this often enough it will stick with them, and they’ll be more conscious of balance in the future.

Many photographers seem to find balance particularly challenging with near-far compositions. Maybe the background is nicely balanced left to right, but the foreground is off-center and out of balance. Or vice versa. For these near-far juxtapositions both the foreground and background have to be balanced left-to-right, and top to bottom.

The background placement is largely determined by where you aim the camera. But the foreground placement is mostly determined by where you place the camera – how high it is off the ground, and exactly where you put it left-to-right, forward-and-back – while keeping the camera pointed at the background, and keeping the background balanced.

You usually need to get the camera low and close to the foreground for these near-far compositions to work. Don’t be shy about it. Put that foreground front and center, right in the viewer’s face. Fill up the whole bottom part of the photo with it.

But when the camera is so close to the foreground, the camera position has to be exactly right. Placing the camera just an inch or two left or right, forward or back, up or down, can make a huge difference. It helps to take the camera off the tripod to find exactly the right spot. (Or use your phone’s camera to sketch the scene and find that spot.) Then you can set up the tripod in that location, at the right height.

And while trying to find this exact camera position, be sure to keep the foreground lined up properly with the background so the background stays in balance. It’s easy to become so focused on finding the perfect foreground that you end up with the camera aimed in slightly the wrong direction, and the background goes out of balance. The foreground and background have to work together. It’s a juggling act. It’s a three-dimensional visual puzzle. Every change in camera position affects how the foreground and background line up.

Sometimes it can work to have a diagonal balance between foreground and background – for example with the foreground focal point left of center, and the background focal point right of center. But it’s tricky to make that work, because a diagonal balance like that introduces tension. If you want tension, great. But most of the time I want my nature photographs to feel calm and balanced, not tense. Especially with flowers.

And I definitely don’t want both the foreground and background to be more heavily weighted to one side of the frame. Then the whole photograph will feel off-kilter. The viewer will wonder, consciously or unconsciously, why there’s empty space on one side of the frame, and why you didn’t point the camera more to the left, or more to the right.

Balance is vital. Don’t neglect it! As you look through the photographs in this post, think about the balance. Do they seem balanced from left to right? Top to bottom? I’ve included some notes about balance in each of the captions.

— Michael Frye

Wildflowers and peaks, Yosemite high country, Yosemite NP, California. Again I tried to position the camera so the foreground flowers would have a good left-right balance, and even distribution across the bottom of the frame, while keeping the three prominent peaks also balanced from left to right.

Peak, clouds, reflections, and wildflowers, Inyo NF, California. Here the most prominent visual focal point, the peak, is a little right of center, but it’s balanced by clouds, which are slightly more heavily weighted toward the left side, and the trees on the left. The most prominent clouds are about the same distance from the top of the frame as the flowers are from the bottom of the frame, and everything else – clouds, peak, reflections of clouds and peak, flowers – is pretty evenly distributed from top to bottom.

Wildflowers, Inyo NF, California. The flowers are pretty evenly distributed from left to right. There are more eye-catching red flowers toward the top of the frame, which might make the image a little top heavy, but they’re at least partially balanced by the greater number of white flowers toward the bottom.

Corn lilies, lupines, and arrowleaf balsamroot, Yosemite NP, California. The lupines and yellow balsamroot are pretty evenly distributed across the image, both left-to-right and top-to-bottom. The dark strip of trees along the top isn’t balanced by anything similar at the bottom, but serves as a border or frame for the line of flowers near the top.

Paintbrush, dew, and spider webs, Inyo NF, California. For a photograph like this, finding a way to keep the pattern evenly distributed across the frame will keep things balanced.

Alpine-crimson columbine hybrids, Inyo NF, California. When I have two prominent, similar objects on either side of the frame, I try to keep the spacing the same on the left and right sides. Here the distance between the left-hand flower and the left edge of the frame is about the same as the distance between the right-hand flower and the right edge of the frame. The columbines are closer to the top, but balanced by the stems below.

Related Posts: Creating Depth: Beyond the Wide-Angle Formula; When Should You Include a Foreground in a Landscape Photograph? Balance and Tension

Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He lives near Yosemite National Park in California, but travels extensively to photograph natural landscapes in the American West and throughout the world.

Michael uses light, weather, and design to make photographs that capture the mood of the landscape, and convey the beauty, power, and mystery of nature. His work has received numerous awards, including the North American Nature Photography Association’s 2023 award for Fine Art in Nature Photography. Michael’s photographs have appeared in publications around the world, and he’s the author and/or principal photographer of several books, including Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, and The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite.

Michael loves to share his knowledge of photography through articles, books, workshops, online courses, and his blog. He’s taught over 200 workshops focused on landscape photography, night photography, digital image processing, and printing.