Elements of Composition - #1 - Rule of Thirds

In photography to make amazing photos, you need three things (not necessarily in this order)

1. Interesting Subject
2. Good Exposure
3. Great Composition

In this series I want to break down composition to its individual elements and walk through them one by one.  The nice thing about composition is its pretty universal through all forms of 2D art.  If you have a background in paining, drawing, etc that will make you a better photographer because, whether you realize it or not, you have at least some sense of composition.

Now I suppose I should define Composition - its the arrangement of elements within an image that help tell the story or invoke a reaction.

I should also define one other term right now since I will be using it frequently in this post as well as others to come and it is the term subject: the main focus of an image.  For instance, if you are doing portraiture it would be the person.  If you are taking a picture of a bridge, its the bridge.

Here is the list I will be covering over the next few weeks.

1. Rule of 3rds
2. Balance
3. Lines
4. Framing
5. Point of View
6. Direction of Movement
7. Pattern
8. Texture

Now a good photo may have one or all of these but more isn't always better! Don't try and force more elements into the image.  It still, to some degree, needs to feel organic and not completely artificial.

Right now I want to cover Rule of 3rds.

This is the most important one of the bunch for various reasons - you should either be using it in every photo you take or not using it for a specific reason.  There is no gray area.

By definition the rule of 3rds say that if you were to cut the frame into thirds both vertically and horizontally, the subject will be positioned at the intersection of those cuts.  To demonstrate I have one of my images and red line representing 1/3 increments from the top and the sides.  Where they intersect has been circled.

Now in this case the main subject is a bridge and you can see it sits right in the cross-hairs of the upper left intersection.  Now I want to stress that is not important for your subject to be EXACTLY in the intersection of the Rule of 3rds - they should simply be off center. If you don't believe me, look at Mr. daVinci's painting below - you may recognize it even if I drew all sorts of lines all over it. For portraiture the eyes are the main focal point so you should be concerned where they are arranged within the image. In the painting below you can see Mona Lisa's eyes are not in the horizontal center and only slightly off from the vertical center-line (not shown).  The green lines represent the technical Rule of 3rds lines and the red cross is the center of the image (approximately).  

Basically, the rule is that the subject should NEVER be in the center of the image.  Except that rules are meant to be broken and there are times when you should put the subject directly in the center of the image.  Those instances are not generally common but if you want to convey a sense of loneliness or isolation then frame the subject in the dead center. I don't have to many examples so the image below is probably my best, but I wouldn't say its great in that I have seen better. This is part of a longer time lapse series which I think is more interesting than just the individual still.

Taken with a Nikon D80 converted to Infrared with a Pro-Optic 8mm lens.

Please stay tuned for the next in the series which I hope to have posted late next week since I will be out of town this weekend (hopefully getting some more Milky Way photos and shooting more videos).

If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments below and if you want to see more please subscribe or look for my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CapturedPhotons

Videos on Infrared Photography can be seen here: https://youtu.be/CMSd2mUAsys

Links to more articles in this series:

To see #2 - Balance - Go HERE

To see #3 - Lines - Go HERE

To see #4 - Framing - Go HERE