"If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." This, a quote from the great war photographer, Robert Capa, is something I say to my students all the time. It rings true with almost every genre of photography with the exception of a few. Generally speaking, this is a great rule of thumb when it comes to photography. FILL THE FRAME!!! Dead space usually does not work unless you are wanting it for effect. Here is an example from one of my assistant who will remain unnamed. The shot as is had nothing interesting in over 80% of the image. When cropped in to create a better image this assistant basically took a 10 megapixel, full frame sensor image down to a 2 megapixel image, hardly big enough for a 4x6 inch print. Useless! Not to mention the time wasted in post production to crop the image. Can negative "dead" space work to your advantage? Of course. As long as there is a reason. In publication we shoot things all the time with dead space to leave room for the designers to overlay it with typography. As an artist I do it for dramatic effect as seen in the above image. If you are trying to get better photos and you are still learning then heed Bob's advice.
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