{"id":43,"date":"2007-05-31T05:45:20","date_gmt":"2007-05-31T05:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetneil.com\/tangents\/2007\/05\/31\/a-composition-guideline\/"},"modified":"2017-11-08T08:56:06","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T12:56:06","slug":"photography-composition-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/photography-composition-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographic composition – Rules & guidelines"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

“There are no rules for good photographs,
\nthere are only good photographs.”
\n– Ansel Adams<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Guidelines to great composition in photography<\/h1>\n

Most or all beginners tend to ‘shoot’ pictures – the camera is aimed at the subject and then the shutter is fired. The result is one of most common errors in photographic composition – the feet of the person being photographed are cut off and lots of empty sky or dead branches or irrelevant whatever in the top half of the picture.<\/p>\n

Also, the placement of focusing sensors in the camera tend to be clustered around the center. Especially true\u00a0for older film cameras – the split-image prism or micro-prisms were dead-center.<\/p>\n

In order to help photographers break out of this non-thinking way of taking photographs, various Rules are proposed for better composition:
\n– the Rule of Thirds
\n– the Golden Mean (which has even been ascribed some divine meaning).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rules & guidelines<\/h2>\n

The Rule Of Thirds <\/strong>was devised by traditional painters as a guide to improve the balance of a picture. When the main or dominant points of interest lie on lines that intersect the picture in ‘thirds’, the picture is purported\u00a0to have\u00a0a dynamic equilibrium.<\/p>\n

With the Golden Mean<\/strong>, the image is analyzed in terms of a concentric spiral. Composition is explained with the spiral swirl connecting\u00a0seemingly random elements in the photograph.<\/p>\n

These rules are\u00a0presented as a mechanical aid to better composition. They are meant to make\u00a0the photographer to actually consider\u00a0what is presented visually.<\/p>\n

These rule were meant to be guidelines – and\u00a0they\u00a0do dramatically improve composition over aiming dead-center. The downside of this is that these rules often\u00a0become near-inflexible formulas for dogmatically traditional photographers. And here is the problem –\u00a0rigidly applying The Rule Of Thirds has made composition an intellectual decision instead of an emotional reaction.\u00a0These are not meant to be\u00a0hard-and-fast absolute rules. They are guidelines to aid composition.<\/p>\n

A dogmatic approach to\u00a0these Rules of Composition would mean\u00a0the composition of a subject is immediately questioned or discarded if the main subject is placed anywhere else in the frame. For example, placing your subject at the edges or right\u00a0at the center of the picture, would be frowned upon, regardless of the initial emotional impact.<\/p>\n

And I kick against that idea. It reigns in\u00a0creativity. For me, there is only one absolute guideline to photographic composition: Frame. Don’t just aim.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Books on photographic composition<\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n

Frame. Don’t just aim<\/h2>\n

That is the one\u00a0guideline to good composition that encourages the photographer to be creative.<\/p>\n