The Rule of Thirds

I started this blog with no real understanding of balance. I had read many books and things online that tried to describe balance, but I could never seem to really comprehend the concept. I tried balancing through math, creating my own measurements and proportions that fit within a grid, and I did improve, but it was a very time consuming method. Unless you had a ruler and calculator in hand, it would be quite difficult to find the underlying grid and measurements.

We had a photography project for our Design studio class, and we basically had to describe 'contrast', 'direction' and 'depth' in each photo. My photos seemed underwhelming for the most part, and two of my professors made the comment that it was "interesting that I can't seemto balance". I felt like it was Foundations all over again, and maybe summer made me lose my handle on what I understood of composition. I moped around for a day, believing I really couldn't do this, I should probably just drop out, a lot of melodramatic thoughts etc, and then I forced myself toactually talk to a professor about it.

He looked through my work and said that out of my 18 photos, there was one photo that told him that I had an 'extraordinary' eye but just didn't know it. I felt like that comment was almost useless because I didn't understand what was so special about the picture, but then I realized, I should probably ask him what he finds so extraordinary about it. He told me it was basically three things that made the photo: tonal range, contrast in angles, and the rule of thirds.

And there was one thing that he had mentioned, but I thought it was a conventional thing that should never be used, because I read about it EVERYWHERE: the rule of thirds.

See the thing is, I'd read all these different materials, and I'd run away from the most common pieces of advice in order to have different work and new ideas. But the rule of thirds is not something you want to run away from, and if you look at most good work, you can actually find an underlying system of the rule of thirds.

I decided to look at my most popular work that people told me they thought was very balanced, and I wanted to see if I could overlay a rule of thirds grid on top of it and see if the rule actually applied to it.

The lower right corner is divided even further with its own rule of thirds

The top horizontal row of the photo is made into its own shade of blue

The middle of the horizontal row is cut in half with a cloud

The left vertical column is occupied by the pagoda

The right vertical column is occupied by the model's body,

with the column divided in half

The middle horizontal row is divided in half by the horizon

The lower horizontal is made by the wave

The twig is making the first vertical column

The dragonfly's body is making the middle horizontal row

The discovery of the rule of thirds in my own work really blew me away. I hadn't even realized I had applied it to a few of my photos. I decided to look through Naima's photos because everyone has always said she's got a great eye and amazing sense of composition. And guess what? She really does. Almost ALL her photographs contains the rule of thirds and complex systems where the rule of thirds gets divided up like crazy with even more rule of thirds within each third. What's crazy is that she's never even tried to apply the rule, and she was unaware that she had even been doing it.

So if you're having trouble with composition, I suggest you try applying a grid with the rule of thirds in it. It'll really help with basic composition and help improve the balance in your work.

Although it's been a slow process, I'm quite content I'm making a bit of progress,

-Deena