50 mm, f6.34, ISO 320, 1/500

Visual mass refers to the amount of space or attention an element in a photo holds. Balancing visual mass is one way to create unity throughout a photo.

For this photo, I created a balance between the attention drawn to the bird, and the attention drawn to its shadow, by framing them symmetrically across the diagonal. To accentuate this, I cropped the photo so that the bird and the shadow were equal distances from their corresponding corner, resulting in the more square-ish frame.

If I were to only capture the bird, there would be a visual imbalance across the photo (unless the bird were to be centered, which tends to be less dynamic).