Photography For Dummies : Rule of Thirds

Zoo Trip

I believe most of the photographer out there is  well aware of the principle of photographic composition.."Rule of Third"..The first thing that most of us learn after we first took up the camrra and make it into life long passion.

Well before i start i wanted to say up front that the rules are meant to be broken and by ignoring Rule of Third doesn't necessarily make your photo uninteresting or unbalance.Being said that,it is wise that we learn the rule before we break it to make sure that breaking the rule is more effective and leave more impact on the photo.

So what is Rule of Third?

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows..

As you’re taking an image you would have done this in your mind through your viewfinder or in the LCD display that you use to frame your shot.

With this grid in mind the ‘Rule of Third’ now identifies four important parts of the image that you should consider placing points of interest in as you frame your image.

Not only this – but it also gives you four ‘lines’ that are also useful positions for elements in your photo.

The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people’s eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the center of the shot – using the rule of thirds works with this natural way of viewing an image rather than working against it.

In addition to the above picture of the elephant where the elephant’s eye becomes the point of focus here are some of examples:

Melaka Trip-A'Famosa

In this image I’ve purposely placed the nozzle of the cannon on one of the intersecting points – especially the that nozzle have some bronze corroding away which are a natural point of focus for the shot. The rest of the cannon take up a secondary point of interest.

Hungry Ghost festival

In this shot I’ve placed the subject along a whole line on the left which means the joss stick is considerably off center and therefore creating an additional point of interest. Placing the joss stick right in the center of the frame could have resulted in an ‘awkward’ shot.

In a similar way a good technique for landscape shots is to position horizons along one of the horizontal lines(fill 1/3 with sky or ground).

Using the Rule of Thirds comes naturally to some photographers but for many of us takes a little time and practice for it to become second nature.

In learning how to use the rule of thirds (and then to break it) the most important questions to be asking of yourself are:

-What are the points of interest in this shot(subject)?
-Where am I intentionally placing them(composition)?

Once again – remember that breaking the rule can result in some striking shots – so once you’ve learnt it experiment with purposely breaking it to see what you discover..

Lastly – keep the rule of thirds in mind as you edit your photos later on. Post production editing tools today have good tools for cropping and reframing images(Such as Photoshop,Lightroom and so on) so that they fit within the rules. Experiment with some of your old shots to see what impact it might have on your photos..Good luck in exploring the RULE OF THIRD..

The Bahasa Malaysia version is available.Please click the link provided below :

Photography For Dummies : Rule of Thirds