October 2023, Rule of Thirds

October 2023, Rule of Thirds

Keeping you informed about happenings at Deliberate Light: photos to browse or buy, photography instruction (see also Digital Photo Academy), and services. Also, my thoughts on a photography subject, this month the Rule of Thirds. To get these newsletters by email a month before they are posted here, go to the DeliberateLight.com website and click on Newsletter Signup.

NEWS

Upcoming Workshops. I am scheduled to teach the following workshops next month.

November 18, location: Bartram’s Garden, Philadelphia
Bartram’s Garden is one of the many hidden gems within the city of Philadelphia. It is a 50-acre National Historic Landmark with historic buildings, historic gardens, meadows, woods and walking trails along the Bartram’s Mile portion of the Schuylkill River Trail system. There are many wonderful sights in this world of nature embedded in an urban setting with a view of the skyscrapers of Center City Philadelphia.

· Mastering Your Camera Controls (1.5 hours) – DSLR/Mirrorless/Compact cameras (smartphone tutorial available separately)

· Composition in the Field (3 hours) – walking tour around the venue with instruction and hands-on practice composing photos (bring any camera)

Coming classes on December 16 in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia.

New Photo. Tannery Brook, along Waterfall Way in Woodstock, NY. Exploring the town of Woodstock in a light rain, we would not have found this peaceful place away from the shops, if not for our friend, Paula, who wandered off just because it was interesting. For those who remember the Woodstock Music Festival of 1969, you probably remember that it was held on Max Yasgur’s farm, if for no other reason than the Joni Mitchell song made famous by CSNY. But it was called Woodstock Music Festival only because the promoters wanted musicians like those who hung out in Woodstock, NY. In fact, Yasgur’s farm was in Bethel, NY, 60 miles from Woodstock. Oh well. For a more detailed, enlarged view, see it on my website.

VIEWS

The Rule of Thirds and when to take it seriously.

Often cited as a guiding principle for photographers, painters and designers, the Rule of Thirds(I like to abbreviate it ROT) is that important visual elements of your photo should aligned to an imaginary tic-tac-toe grid overlaying the image. This grid divides the photo into thirds both horizontally and vertically, as illustrated in the following photo (not the greatest photo but sufficient to illustrate).

And here is the photo without the grid.

I consider the group of 3 people to be important to the photo and we see that they are not really centered on any of the grid lines. I could shoot the picture again with the group aligned on the grid, but it is much easier to crop this photo to achieve the same thing. So, here I have centered them on the lower left intersection of the grid lines.

Why align on the grid? I have read a lot of discussions of the ROT and mostly they simply state it as fact that it is the best way to align things without justification as to why that might be. Sometimes they try to justify it by asserting some perceptual basis, such as that we usually see the ground in 2/3 of our visual field and the sky in 1/3 (or maybe vice versa) and that we tend to focus our attention in the center third of our horizontal field of vision. I have never seen any perceptual studies supporting any of this. If you know of any, please tell me.

However, I am willing to accept “Wherever it feels most pleasing/comfortable.” I note that, within the ROT, that leaves a lot of options for where exactly the “most pleasing/comfortable” alignment is. That feels right to me and art is about feelings, right? And, despite any attempts to justify it otherwise, over 200 years of art theory mostly boils down to “it feels right.” So, welcome to the land of feelings and the judgments thereof.

Speaking of feelings, the positioning of the group as above is not the only one that satisfies the Rule of Thirds: any alignment to the grid would work. For example, consider this one.

I like this one a little better than the previous one, because it uses the leading lines of the road to direct your eye to the group and it conveys to me a little story about a journey being undertaken along that road. The previous photo seems like just a nice view of trees with the important element, the group, relegated to the bottom.

Now consider this one, where the group is aligned on the lower right intersection. It may satisfy the ROT, but I still do not like it because the group feels a little cornered almost like their travel momentum is being blocked. I prefer to leave a little space in the direction the subject is going to imply imminent movement.

In other words, some of these positionings feel better to me and some worse. But the one I like most, the one with the group in the upper left, does satisfy the ROT. Regardless of whether you agree with my various judgments, I think you have to agree that the positioning of the group has an effect on how you experience the photo.

So, do we have to follow the ROT slavishly? Short answer: Nope. As Geoffrey Rush said in Pirates of the Caribbean about the Pirate Code: “The Code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.” In other words, use it if you like the results, but don’t feel compelled. Many times, it is a good place to start, but there are plenty of situations where I emphatically do not think things should be aligned on the ROT grid.

For example, context matters. I used Photoshop to add more woods into the original photo and show below two photos, the first violating the ROT and the second with the exact same positioning as I liked above. In this case, I like the first photo below where the group is nudged toward the center away from the ROT grid, because it feels like an off-road adventure about to happen, whereas the second photo now feels off-balance with a cluttered, distracting foreground instead of a leading lines road.

Where else should you readily abandon the ROT? When you are filling the frame with your subject, trying to match the ROT grid would be awkward, if not impossible.