Composition and Visual Design

Introduction

Photography is not simply the recording of subjects in front of a camera. It is the deliberate organization of visual elements within a frame. Composition determines what viewers notice first, how their eyes move through an image, what relationships they infer, and what meaning they attach to the subject. In mass media, where images compete for attention across newspapers, websites, social platforms, advertisements, television, and mobile screens, composition is a central communication skill.

A technically sharp photograph can still fail if its subject is visually lost, its hierarchy is unclear, or its framing contradicts the intended message. Conversely, a photograph made with modest equipment can communicate powerfully when the photographer controls viewpoint, spatial relationships, contrast, rhythm, and emphasis.

Composition is neither a fixed recipe nor a purely intuitive activity. It involves conventions developed through art history, photography, graphic design, cinema, journalism, advertising, and interface design. These conventions help audiences interpret images quickly, but they can also be challenged for expressive or critical purposes. Effective visual communication therefore requires both knowledge of compositional principles and the judgment to adapt them to context.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Explain composition as a system of visual organization and communication.
2. Use framing, viewpoint, balance, hierarchy, contrast, scale, rhythm, negative space, and perspective intentionally.
3. Apply compositional conventions such as the rule of thirds, leading lines, symmetry, and visual triangles without treating them as rigid formulas.
4. Analyze how composition directs attention and constructs meaning.
5. Adapt images for editorial, advertising, social-media, documentary, and corporate communication formats.
6. Evaluate ethical and practical consequences of compositional choices.
7. Produce and critique photographs using a structured visual-design process.

1. Composition as Visual Syntax

Language organizes words into meaningful structures; composition organizes visual elements into relationships. A photograph contains subjects, lines, shapes, colors, textures, tones, spaces, and implied movement. Composition determines how these elements coexist.

Three levels are useful in analysis:

• Subject matter: What is represented—people, objects, places, events, or actions.
• Form: How visual elements are arranged, including size, position, color, focus, direction, and proportion.
• Meaning: What the arrangement suggests about identity, power, emotion, urgency, culture, or value.

The same subject can communicate different meanings through different compositions. A politician photographed from below may appear powerful; photographed from above, vulnerable or diminished. A product placed in a large area of empty space may appear premium and refined, while the same product surrounded by numerous objects may appear practical, abundant, or inexpensive.

Composition operates through attention, interpretation, and memory. Attention is directed by visual salience: brightness, sharpness, contrast, human faces, eyes, saturated color, and unusual placement. Interpretation is shaped by spatial relationships and cultural conventions. Memory is strengthened when an image has a clear structure, distinctive focal point, and emotionally meaningful detail.

A useful design question is: What should the viewer see first, second, and third? If the answer is unclear, the image may lack hierarchy.

2. The Frame: Selection and Exclusion

The frame is the boundary that separates what is included from what is excluded. Framing is therefore an act of selection. It establishes the viewer’s access to an event and controls the amount of contextual information available.

2.1 Types of framing

• Long shot: Shows a subject in substantial environmental context. It is useful for location, scale, social relationships, and activity.
• Medium shot: Presents a subject with enough surrounding information to show action or interaction.
• Close-up: Emphasizes face, object, gesture, or detail. It increases emotional and visual intensity.
• Extreme close-up: Isolates a small detail, often creating abstraction or symbolic emphasis.
• Open framing: Suggests that action or space continues beyond the image boundaries.
• Closed framing: Contains the visual action within the frame and can suggest completeness, confinement, or control.

Cropping affects meaning. Cutting near a joint may appear awkward or imply physical amputation; cropping just outside the joint usually feels more natural. A person looking or moving toward the edge of the frame may feel constrained, while space in front of the gaze or movement creates anticipation.

Framing also has editorial consequences. A news photograph cropped tightly around conflict may create urgency, but it can conceal the wider conditions that explain the event. A promotional image may exclude distracting surroundings to create a clean brand message. In both cases, the frame constructs a particular version of reality.

3. Viewpoint, Camera Position, and Meaning

Viewpoint includes camera height, distance, angle, orientation, and position relative to the subject. It is one of the most powerful ways to influence perceived power and intimacy.

• Eye-level viewpoint: Usually appears neutral and familiar. It supports identification and conversational realism.
• High-angle viewpoint: Looks down on the subject. It may suggest vulnerability, smallness, surveillance, or overview, although context determines interpretation.
• Low-angle viewpoint: Looks upward. It may suggest authority, strength, monumentality, or threat.
• Bird’s-eye viewpoint: Provides an extensive overview and can make people appear patterned, organized, or insignificant.
• Worm’s-eye viewpoint: Intensifies height and distortion, often producing drama or instability.
• Oblique or Dutch angle: Tilts the horizon and may communicate tension, disorientation, or psychological disturbance.

Distance also communicates relationship. A close camera position can imply intimacy or intrusion; a distant position can imply observation, isolation, or social context. In documentary photography, the photographer must consider whether proximity provides necessary evidence or violates personal dignity.

Viewpoint should be chosen in relation to purpose. A corporate portrait may use eye-level framing to communicate trust. An environmental campaign may use a high viewpoint to show the scale of deforestation. A sports advertisement may use a low viewpoint to make an athlete appear heroic.

4. Balance and Visual Stability

Balance concerns the distribution of visual weight. Weight is not only physical size. A small dark object may balance a large pale area; a saturated red form may outweigh a larger gray form; a face may attract more attention than an inanimate object of equal size.

4.1 Symmetrical balance

Symmetrical balance places similar elements on opposite sides of an axis. It often communicates stability, authority, order, ceremony, and institutional control. Architectural entrances, formal portraits, and official documents frequently use symmetry.

4.2 Asymmetrical balance

Asymmetrical balance uses unequal elements that nevertheless create equilibrium. A large, low-contrast shape may be balanced by a smaller, high-contrast shape. Asymmetry often feels dynamic and contemporary because it introduces tension without visual collapse.

4.3 Radial balance

Radial balance organizes elements around a central point, as in a circular staircase, flower, wheel, or crowd surrounding a speaker. It directs attention toward the center or along radiating lines.

4.4 Imbalance and intentional tension

Not every successful image should be balanced. Deliberate imbalance can express instability, urgency, loneliness, or impending movement. The important distinction is between purposeful tension and accidental visual weakness. A composition should appear unstable because the message requires instability, not because distracting objects were overlooked.

5. Hierarchy and the Focal Point

Visual hierarchy is the order in which elements attract attention. A strong photograph usually has a primary focal point, supporting elements, and background information. Hierarchy is established through:

• Size and scale
• Sharpness and depth of field
• Brightness and tonal contrast
• Color saturation or complementary color
• Position within the frame
• Isolation through negative space
• Human faces, eyes, and gestures
• Directional lines and movement
• Repetition and interruption

The focal point need not be at the geometric center. Center placement can communicate stability, directness, or iconic importance, but off-center placement often creates greater movement and context.

A useful editing exercise is to convert an image to grayscale or squint at it. If the subject remains visually dominant, tonal hierarchy is probably effective. If background details compete with the subject, the image may need a change in viewpoint, lighting, depth of field, crop, or background.

Hierarchy is especially important in visual communication for mobile devices. Small screens reduce detail and viewing time. The primary message must survive reduction in size. This is why campaign thumbnails, news previews, and social-media cards generally require a clear subject and strong contrast.

6. Contrast

Contrast is difference. It may be tonal, chromatic, spatial, textural, directional, conceptual, or emotional.

• Tonal contrast: Difference between light and dark.
• Color contrast: Difference in hue, saturation, or temperature.
• Scale contrast: Difference between large and small forms.
• Texture contrast: Difference between rough and smooth surfaces.
• Sharpness contrast: Difference between focused and blurred areas.
• Conceptual contrast: Juxtaposition of ideas such as wealth and poverty, tradition and technology, or isolation and community.

Contrast attracts attention and clarifies relationships. High contrast can suggest drama, conflict, urgency, or energy. Low contrast may suggest calmness, subtlety, softness, or nostalgia. These are tendencies rather than universal meanings; cultural context and subject matter remain important.

Contrast should be controlled. Excessive contrast throughout the frame can produce visual competition, while insufficient contrast can make the subject indistinct. A common professional strategy is to reserve the strongest contrast for the intended focal point.

7. Scale and Proportion

Scale is the apparent size of an element relative to other elements or to the frame. Proportion concerns relationships among dimensions. Scale can communicate power, vulnerability, distance, importance, or humor.

A person shown as very small within a vast landscape may appear isolated, adventurous, or insignificant. A close-up of a hand holding a tiny object may make that object symbolically important. Including a familiar human figure can provide a reference for judging the size of a building, natural feature, or crowd.

Photographic scale is affected by lens choice and camera distance. A wide-angle lens used close to a subject can exaggerate foreground size and spatial depth. A long focal-length lens from farther away can compress apparent distances. These effects should not be confused with the simple act of enlarging or reducing an image after capture.

Proportion also matters when adapting one image to different formats. A horizontal photograph cropped to a vertical mobile format may remove contextual elements or alter the subject’s visual balance. Designers should plan for required aspect ratios when possible, leaving appropriate space around important content.

8. Negative Space and Visual Breathing Room

Negative space is the relatively empty area surrounding or separating subjects. It is not wasted space. It can isolate a subject, create calm, suggest loneliness, accommodate text, or indicate direction and possibility.

In advertising, negative space is often reserved for a headline, logo, or call to action. In editorial design, it permits flexible cropping and layout. In portraiture, space in front of a subject’s gaze gives the viewer a sense of mental or physical extension.

Negative space becomes expressive when its size and shape relate to the subject. A small figure surrounded by extensive empty space may suggest solitude. A product placed in generous, uncluttered space may suggest luxury. However, empty space can also weaken an image if it lacks purpose or makes the subject appear accidentally displaced.

The correct question is not whether a frame is full, but whether every significant area contributes to communication.

9. Lines, Perspective, and Depth

Lines may be actual, such as roads, rails, architectural edges, or cables, or implied, such as a person’s gaze or the direction of pointing. Lines guide the eye and create movement.

• Horizontal lines often suggest rest, stability, and calm.
• Vertical lines suggest height, strength, dignity, or aspiration.
• Diagonal lines suggest movement, instability, and energy.
• Curved lines suggest grace, continuity, and organic movement.
• Converging lines create depth and direct attention toward a vanishing point.

Perspective is the visual appearance of spatial depth. In linear perspective, parallel lines appear to converge as they recede. Atmospheric perspective uses reduced contrast, lower saturation, and bluish tones to suggest distance. Overlapping forms, relative size, texture gradient, and focus also contribute to depth.

A photographer can use perspective to organize a journey through the frame. A path that begins in the foreground and narrows toward the background may lead the viewer toward a person or landmark. Such leading lines should support the subject rather than merely decorate the image.

Lens perspective is determined primarily by camera position relative to the subject, not by focal length alone. Changing camera position changes the relative size of near and far objects. Changing focal length while maintaining position changes the angle of view and framing but does not independently create a new geometric perspective.

10. Rhythm, Repetition, and Pattern

Rhythm is the visual recurrence of elements. Repeated windows, people, colors, gestures, shadows, or shapes establish a beat. Rhythm can be regular, alternating, progressive, or interrupted.

• Regular rhythm: Repetition at predictable intervals; often communicates order.
• Alternating rhythm: Two or more elements repeat in sequence; creates variation.
• Progressive rhythm: Elements change gradually in size, color, or spacing.
• Interrupted rhythm: A repeated pattern is broken by a contrasting element; creates emphasis and narrative interest.

Photographers can find rhythm in architecture, markets, crowds, machinery, landscapes, and everyday domestic spaces. An interruption is often the focal point: one open window among closed windows, one person facing the opposite direction, or one red object among neutral tones.

Pattern tends toward sameness, while rhythm introduces movement through repetition and variation. The distinction is useful when analyzing why some images feel static and others feel dynamic.

11. Compositional Conventions and Their Uses

Rule of thirds

The rule of thirds divides the frame into nine equal areas using two horizontal and two vertical lines. Placing important elements near intersections or lines can produce a balanced, open composition. It is particularly useful for landscapes, portraits, and environmental scenes. It is not a law; centered composition, symmetry, or deliberate edge placement may be more appropriate.

Golden-section and diagonal arrangements

The golden section and related spiral diagrams are often used to describe pleasing proportional relationships. They can be useful as planning guides, but claims that they universally explain beauty are overstated. Viewers respond to culture, familiarity, content, and expectation as well as proportion.

Symmetry and central composition

Symmetry communicates order and visual authority. Central composition gives a subject directness and iconic force. It is effective for faces, objects, architecture, and formal documentation, especially when distractions are minimized.

Triangular composition

Three points or groups can create a stable visual triangle. In portraiture, the arrangement of head, hands, and body may form a triangle; in group photography, triangular spacing can prevent a flat row-like appearance.

Figure–ground separation

Figure–ground organization distinguishes the subject from its surroundings. Separation may be created through contrast, focus, color, lighting, contour, or negative space. Without adequate separation, the subject may merge with the background.

These conventions are starting points rather than substitutes for judgment. A skilled photographer asks what the convention accomplishes and whether it supports the communication objective.

12. Designing for Different Media Formats

Composition must anticipate where and how an image will be encountered.

For video and sequential media, composition also controls continuity. A subject moving screen-right should generally continue moving in the same direction across successive shots unless a deliberate reversal is intended. Consistent screen direction helps viewers understand spatial relationships.

Responsive design requires planning multiple crops. A photographer or media manager should capture sufficient surrounding space, produce alternate orientations when possible, and identify the non-negotiable visual content before cropping.

13. A Practical Compositional Workflow

A disciplined workflow combines observation, intention, experimentation, and evaluation.

Step 1: Define the communication purpose

Identify whether the image must inform, persuade, identify, evoke emotion, document, or create a brand association.

Step 2: Identify the primary subject

State the subject in one sentence. If several elements compete equally, decide whether that multiplicity is intentional.

Step 3: Select viewpoint and distance

Move physically before relying on zoom. Test high, low, close, distant, horizontal, and vertical positions.

Step 4: Scan the edges

Check for cut-off limbs, bright distractions, poles appearing to grow from heads, unwanted logos, and accidental mergers between subject and background.

Step 5: Establish hierarchy

Use position, contrast, focus, color, scale, and negative space to decide what viewers should notice first.

Step 6: Make variations

Create alternatives using symmetry, asymmetry, centered framing, rule of thirds, and different amounts of context.

Step 7: Review at intended size

A photograph that works on a large monitor may fail as a phone thumbnail. Evaluate the image in its actual communication environment.

Step 8: Apply ethical and technical checks

Confirm that the image is accurately captioned, appropriately edited, legally usable, and respectful of subjects.

14. Applied Case: A Public-Health Campaign

Background

The fictional city health department of Riverton wants to increase awareness of free vaccination clinics among young adults. The campaign will appear on bus shelters, Instagram, and a mobile website.

Problem

An initial photograph shows a crowded clinic waiting room. It is accurate but visually confusing: signs, chairs, and people compete for attention. The vaccination message is not immediately apparent, and the horizontal crop does not adapt well to mobile screens.

Analysis

The image lacks a clear hierarchy and figure–ground separation. Its strongest contrast occurs in a bright advertisement on the wall rather than on the intended subject. The crowd provides context but does not identify the campaign action. The frame also leaves no useful negative space for text.

Approach and solution

The media team photographs a young adult receiving information from a nurse at a clearly marked clinic desk. The camera is placed at eye level to communicate trust. A medium shot includes the clinic sign as contextual evidence, while a shallow depth of field separates the interaction from background activity. The subject is placed slightly to one side, leaving negative space for the headline. A second vertical version is captured rather than produced solely by cropping the horizontal frame. The team also makes a wider image for the website, where explanatory text will occupy a side column.

The campaign uses moderate tonal contrast, a consistent health-service color, and a repeated visual motif of open hands and readable signage. The team avoids exaggerated low angles or dramatic lighting that might make the procedure appear frightening.

Outcome

In pre-release testing, viewers identify the clinic purpose more quickly and recall the free-service message more accurately. The vertical image retains the primary interaction, while the wider version provides location and context. The design performs consistently across print and digital formats.

Learning points

1. Composition must be designed for a communication objective, not merely for visual attractiveness.
2. Context is useful only when it supports, rather than obscures, the message.
3. Negative space can be planned as a functional area for typography.
4. Different media formats may require different compositions, not just different crops.
5. Ethical visual tone matters: public communication should inform without manufacturing unnecessary fear.

15. Critical, Ethical, and Professional Considerations

Composition is a form of editorial power. Cropping can remove evidence, rearrange apparent relationships, or change the perceived meaning of an event. A photographer should not use compositional manipulation to misrepresent documentary reality. Basic adjustments to exposure, color, and cropping may be acceptable under an organization’s editorial policy, but substantive alteration should be disclosed or prohibited where accuracy is central.

Portraits require attention to consent, dignity, cultural norms, and power relationships. A low angle may unintentionally glorify a harmful actor; a high angle may stereotype a vulnerable person. Images of children, patients, disaster victims, and marginalized communities require particular care.

Artificial intelligence can now generate, extend, remove, or reposition visual content. These tools may assist with layout testing or non-deceptive design tasks, but they create serious risks when synthetic or materially altered images are presented as documentary evidence. Media organizations should maintain provenance records, label synthetic content where relevant, and define acceptable editing boundaries.

Accessibility also affects composition. Sufficient contrast supports viewers with low vision, while relying solely on color may exclude color-blind audiences. Important information should be reinforced through shape, position, text, or pattern. Alt text and captions should explain communicative content rather than merely repeat decorative description.

Professionally, composition should be documented in a brief or style guide. A media team may specify preferred aspect ratios, safe areas for text, brand colors, acceptable crops, image hierarchy, and accessibility requirements. Such standards improve consistency without eliminating creative judgment.

Challenges and Limitations

Compositional conventions are culturally and historically situated. A visual arrangement perceived as balanced in one context may feel formal, empty, or hierarchical in another. Audience research is therefore valuable when images are used across cultures.

Attention is also affected by platform algorithms, captions, sound, motion, and surrounding interface elements. A photograph cannot be analyzed entirely apart from its media environment. Furthermore, compositional principles do not guarantee persuasion. A clear image may fail because the message is irrelevant, the source lacks credibility, or the audience distrusts the institution.

Finally, visual analysis should avoid treating viewers as passive. Audiences interpret images through experience, ideology, identity, and cultural knowledge. Composition guides interpretation, but it does not determine it completely.

Best Practices

• Begin with the communication purpose and audience.
• Make the primary subject identifiable at a glance.
• Use viewpoint deliberately rather than accepting the first camera position.
• Check all frame edges and background relationships.
• Reserve strongest contrast for the intended focal point.
• Use negative space functionally.
• Capture alternate orientations for different platforms.
• Treat compositional conventions as tools, not laws.
• Test images at actual publication size.
• Maintain documentary accuracy and disclose substantive alterations.
• Consider accessibility, cultural context, consent, and dignity.
• Critique images using evidence: identify the visual device, its effect, and its communicative consequence.

Chapter Summary

Composition is the organized arrangement of visual elements within a frame. It directs attention, establishes relationships, supports interpretation, and influences emotional response. Framing controls inclusion and exclusion; viewpoint communicates intimacy, power, and context; balance creates stability or purposeful tension; hierarchy identifies what matters most; contrast separates and emphasizes; scale establishes significance and spatial relationships; negative space provides isolation, calm, direction, or room for text; lines and perspective create movement and depth; rhythm and repetition organize visual patterns.

Conventions such as the rule of thirds, symmetry, central composition, triangular arrangements, leading lines, and figure–ground separation are useful starting points, but they must be adapted to purpose, audience, culture, and format. Professional composition requires planning for print, mobile, video, advertising, editorial, and corporate contexts. It also requires ethical judgment because cropping, viewpoint, editing, and synthetic-generation tools can influence how people and events are understood. The most effective visual communicator combines formal knowledge with observation, experimentation, contextual awareness, and critical evaluation.

Key Terms

Composition: The deliberate arrangement of visual elements within a frame.

Framing: The selection of what is included in and excluded from an image.

Viewpoint: The camera’s position, height, angle, and distance relative to the subject.

Visual hierarchy: The order in which elements attract and hold attention.

Focal point: The primary area of visual emphasis.

Visual weight: The attention-grabbing force of an element based on size, contrast, color, position, or meaning.

Symmetrical balance: Balance created through similar elements on opposite sides of an axis.

Asymmetrical balance: Equilibrium created by unequal but visually compensating elements.

Contrast: Difference between visual or conceptual elements.

Scale: The apparent size of an element relative to other elements or the frame.

Proportion: The relationship among dimensions of visual elements.

Negative space: Relatively unoccupied space surrounding or separating subjects.

Leading line: An actual or implied line that guides the viewer’s eye.

Perspective: The visual organization of depth and spatial distance.

Rhythm: Visual movement created through repetition and variation.

Figure–ground: The relationship between a principal subject and its surrounding field.

Rule of thirds: A compositional guide that divides the frame into nine equal areas.

Aspect ratio: The proportional relationship between an image’s width and height.

Screen direction: The perceived direction of movement or gaze across a sequence of images.

Visual salience: The degree to which an element attracts attention.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the difference between subject matter, form, and meaning in photographic analysis?
2. Define negative space and identify two communication purposes it can serve.
3. How does viewpoint influence the perceived power of a subject?
4. Distinguish between symmetrical and asymmetrical balance.
5. What is visual hierarchy, and how can contrast help establish it?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how framing and viewpoint work together to construct meaning in a documentary photograph.
2. Discuss the role of scale, perspective, and leading lines in creating depth and directing attention.
3. Explain why compositional conventions should be treated as flexible principles rather than rigid rules.
4. Compare the compositional requirements of a news image, an advertisement, and a mobile social-media image.
5. Discuss the ethical implications of cropping, editing, viewpoint, and AI-assisted image alteration.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A portrait subject is placed in the center of a cluttered room, and the background is brighter than the face. Diagnose the hierarchy problem and propose three compositional changes.
2. Design a photographic brief for a public-service campaign that must appear on a billboard and a mobile feed. Specify framing, viewpoint, hierarchy, negative space, and adaptation strategy.
3. Select a published photograph and analyze it using at least six concepts from this chapter. Explain how each concept contributes to or weakens the image’s communication.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which compositional concept refers to the order in which elements attract viewer attention?

A. Visual hierarchy

B. Atmospheric perspective

C. Radial balance

D. Aspect ratio

Correct Answer: A. Visual hierarchy

Question 2

A photographer leaves open space in front of a runner’s direction of movement. What is the primary effect?

A. It makes the runner appear stationary.

B. It creates room for implied movement and anticipation.

C. It eliminates visual hierarchy.

D. It guarantees symmetrical balance.

Correct Answer: B. It creates room for implied movement and anticipation.

Question 3

Which viewpoint is most commonly associated with making a subject appear powerful or monumental?

A. High-angle viewpoint

B. Eye-level viewpoint

C. Low-angle viewpoint

D. Bird’s-eye viewpoint

Correct Answer: C. Low-angle viewpoint

Question 4

What is asymmetrical balance?

A. Identical elements arranged on both sides of an axis

B. Equilibrium created by unequal elements with compensating visual weight

C. A frame containing no negative space

D. A pattern based only on circular forms

Correct Answer: B. Equilibrium created by unequal elements with compensating visual weight

Question 5

Which type of contrast is created by placing a sharply focused subject against a blurred background?

A. Sharpness contrast

B. Conceptual contrast

C. Scale contrast

D. Radial contrast

Correct Answer: A. Sharpness contrast

Question 6

The rule of thirds divides an image into:

A. Four equal triangles

B. Six equal rectangles

C. Nine equal areas

D. Twelve equal squares

Correct Answer: C. Nine equal areas

Question 7

Why can a familiar human figure be included in a landscape photograph?

A. To provide a reference for judging scale

B. To eliminate perspective

C. To guarantee high tonal contrast

D. To create radial balance in every case

Correct Answer: A. To provide a reference for judging scale

Question 8

What is an interrupted rhythm?

A. A repeated pattern with no variation

B. A pattern broken by a contrasting element

C. A composition with only diagonal lines

D. A symmetrical arrangement around a central axis

Correct Answer: B. A pattern broken by a contrasting element

Question 9

Which statement about photographic perspective is most accurate?

A. Perspective is determined only by the camera’s focal length.

B. Perspective is determined primarily by the camera’s position relative to the subject.

C. Perspective exists only in wide-angle photographs.

D. Perspective cannot be altered by changing camera position.

Correct Answer: B. Perspective is determined primarily by the camera’s position relative to the subject.

Question 10

Why should important visual content be protected when adapting an image for mobile formats?

A. Mobile screens always display images in landscape orientation.

B. Cropping can remove essential information or disrupt visual hierarchy.

C. Mobile images do not use contrast.

D. Vertical formats eliminate the need for negative space.

Correct Answer: B. Cropping can remove essential information or disrupt visual hierarchy.