Rule of the thirds

There are many rules about photograph composition that is good to pay attention to or at least know and understand. It’s your choice whether you decide to follow but it is good to know them. 

One very basic is the so called Rule of the thirds, which is just a rule of thumb based on the ancient Greek concept of the Golden ratio. The rule is very simple and it is something along the lines of:

“The key compositional elements of a picture is best to be placed in one of the intersections of a grid that splits the picture into 9 equal surfaces. Other clearly visible lines follow the grid”

This works best on landscape photography but some photographers try to apply that on every shot (i.e. in portrait photography one of the eyes must be in one of the intersection points). The extension to which this rule will be applied is up to you, the photographer.

As an example which you can compare for yourselves the following two pictures of a beautiful sunset in a misty field with a tiny house. One has been composed following strictly the rule of the thirds (house placed in one of the intersection points and the horizon is aligned with one of the lines) whereas the second clearly follows no rules. Although aesthetics is totally subjective and differs from every viewer, the first picture seems more dynamic although not symmetrical

Picture 1

Picture 2

Almost all cameras (if you dig in the settings) provide assistance and can present the lines on the back screen or in the viewfinder that you can use to frame your picture following the rule of the thirds.

Before we close, another rule that might be helpful in terms of aesthetics is that an odd number of key compositional elements results in a more pleasant result than an even one. For example, a shot of a field with 1 tree is more pleasing to a shot with 2 trees, because the human eye is trained to process better odd number of elements rather than even.

Those are the rules. Know them and break them to boost creativity!