10 Myths of the rule of thirds

[merops]

...

Assuming this is a genuine question rather than you are merely trying to take the p#ss. What makes this photos composition 'exceptional' is the fact that the underlying 'gamut' of the fisherman in the water matches the gamut of the other 3 fishermen. Whether this was achieved by McCurry achieving a 'decisive moment' or it was actually set up by him I couldnt tell you but without the coincidence of gamut this would not be considered much of a picture.

...

I find the similarity of the gamuts claimed rather 'forced'. To me they are nowhere near parallel. In fact I find the three fisherman strikingly irregular in their placement for something that is a 'series'. I also find disturbing that the nearest fisherman on a pole is leaning out of the photo, and that his fishing rod is cut off by the edge of the photo. My eyes keep following this fisherman's posture out of the frame.

Which is not to say that it is not an excellent photo, just that I don't see the claimed uniformity of gamut.

Well that is interesting. I find the idea that the 'three fisherman are adopting similar poses' - pretty bloody convincing. To me if you 'dont' think those 3 fishermen are adopting a similar pose you really need your eyes examined. For me those 3 fishermen have such a similar pose, I wonder whether they were deliberately posed that way by McCurry (especially given the sinister/baroque nature of the diagonals). I would have thought that those 3 fisherman could apply for sequential fishing at the olympics.... But, hey, if you dont see any similarity in their poses, then go for it.....And of course the guy in the sea doesnt have any gamut related to the others too?

And possibly, the edge flicker and slightly off horizon is all because McCurry was too lazy to correct it?

3 Fisherman poses: if you think that they could call this synchronised fishing for the Olympics, you're never going to pick the winners. The posture of the left arm of each of them is different: two are holding on with their left hand, but one forearm up and the other forearm down, and the third is holding on with the crook of his elbow.

The pole of the left hand fisherman is 8 degrees counter-clockwise from your indicated line, and the rod of the fisherman in the water is 7 degrees clockwise from your indicated line - so lines in the photo that you are claiming as parallel are about 15 degrees out from each other.

So, no, I don't think your claimed similarity of gamuts is compelling, nor that the similarity of poses is pretty bloody convincing. I don't think this degree of similarity requires any deliberate posing by McCurry.

 

[Abrak]

...

Assuming this is a genuine question rather than you are merely trying to take the p#ss. What makes this photos composition 'exceptional' is the fact that the underlying 'gamut' of the fisherman in the water matches the gamut of the other 3 fishermen. Whether this was achieved by McCurry achieving a 'decisive moment' or it was actually set up by him I couldnt tell you but without the coincidence of gamut this would not be considered much of a picture.

...

I find the similarity of the gamuts claimed rather 'forced'. To me they are nowhere near parallel. In fact I find the three fisherman strikingly irregular in their placement for something that is a 'series'. I also find disturbing that the nearest fisherman on a pole is leaning out of the photo, and that his fishing rod is cut off by the edge of the photo. My eyes keep following this fisherman's posture out of the frame.

Which is not to say that it is not an excellent photo, just that I don't see the claimed uniformity of gamut.

Well that is interesting. I find the idea that the 'three fisherman are adopting similar poses' - pretty bloody convincing. To me if you 'dont' think those 3 fishermen are adopting a similar pose you really need your eyes examined. For me those 3 fishermen have such a similar pose, I wonder whether they were deliberately posed that way by McCurry (especially given the sinister/baroque nature of the diagonals). I would have thought that those 3 fisherman could apply for sequential fishing at the olympics.... But, hey, if you dont see any similarity in their poses, then go for it.....And of course the guy in the sea doesnt have any gamut related to the others too?

And possibly, the edge flicker and slightly off horizon is all because McCurry was too lazy to correct it?

3 Fisherman poses: if you think that they could call this synchronised fishing for the Olympics, you're never going to pick the winners. The posture of the left arm of each of them is different: two are holding on with their left hand, but one forearm up and the other forearm down, and the third is holding on with the crook of his elbow.

The pole of the left hand fisherman is 8 degrees counter-clockwise from your indicated line, and the rod of the fisherman in the water is 7 degrees clockwise from your indicated line - so lines in the photo that you are claiming as parallel are about 15 degrees out from each other.

So, no, I don't think your claimed similarity of gamuts is compelling, nor that the similarity of poses is pretty bloody convincing. I don't think this degree of similarity requires any deliberate posing by McCurry.

I suspect there is a miscommunication going on here. In my original post I claimed a 'similar gamut' with the 3 fishermen - implying their postures were broadly similar. I also later implied that they were so similar that they 'might' have been posed. (I certainly understand a point that the poses are not identical and even that they are different enough that they almost certainly werent posed) but the underlying point I was making is that the poses are inherently similar. So posed or not, Mccurry didnt shoot at some random moment but at a time of similar gamut.



--

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rob collins

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[tony field]

Just to change the subject a little bit why do you think Leibowitz has chopped off this girl's foot. Do you actually think it is because her lens wasnt wide enough? her sensor not big enough? She needed to fit the photo into a magazine? the model refused to move her foot? she didnt notice? the photo fitted a lot better into the rot with the foot cut off?

Depends upon how you personally deconstruct this image. IMHO, nothing to do with "rule of thirds" ... that is like trying the RoT shoehorn to help you put on your hat ... rather silly.

My deconstruction says: the right male and red shoe cut off adds a visual tension; the rest of the images is carefully constructed "geometry" with body and shape angles to create an image flow that fully connects the subject material appropriately and with good story telling.

Damned fine image IMHO - deconstruction is not really necessary but is "interesting".

--
Charles Darwin: "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
tony
http://www.tphoto.ca

 

[Jestertheclown]

The biggest myth is 'rules of thirds'.

It is really the golden ratio and it is found through out nature, music, architecture, and many other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

Another load of old twaddle, apparently.


"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

 

[Paul B Jones]

Number One myth about the rule of thirds - it is something worth "debunking".

The rule is simply a first step into thinking about composition and serves that purpose wonderfully. No one thinks it is the unified field theory of photography, so I wish the hectoring lectures would stop from the self-appointed composition geniuses.

 

[David Pavlich]

Rule of thirds, rule of odds, symmetry, motion, etc. are all ways to compose shots and are not steadfast...it's art as has been stated time and again. However, if you watch a well done TV show or movie, pay attention to the placement of the characters. Being a Downton Abbey fan, I've seen the scene several times where a solitary figure is strolling the grounds. That figure is NEVER in the middle of the scene.

Heck, even the final scene in one of the X-men movies has Wolverine standing outside of the school and he's in the left third of the shot.

David

 

[Bill Dewey]

Quite an interesting article, and some rather strong opinions both in the article and in this thread. Now comes the tricky part for me. Most of what I shoot are moving objects, birds, animal, people playing sports, running dogs, etc.

I am trying to figure out how in the name of heave I can make this work? Does somebody make some sort of gizmo I can stuff in my viewfinder so I know where all "the power points where the rectilinear's meet the baroque and sinister diagonals fall broadly on the ROT"? And then I only press the shutter when the heavens and stars align?

My gosh, I sure need some help I think. Not sure I can ever take another picture with all this floating around in my head ..... ;-)

My golly, why do people get so hung up on this? Would it not be fun to go back and actually speak with the masters to find out how much "gestalt" they were using, or whatever technique? I wonder how it would line up to what people now claim they were doing.

I do think it interesting to utilize some of the overlays when I am cropping an image, and it is even more fun to then break those rules to create something I like even better :-D

 

[tko]

You see, you already had your mind made up. You went to his website to prove him wrong. You sought out anything that was wrong and then lit it up in lights and pointed at it.

But you failed to listen.

No, that's exactly what you and the website did. Took a simple, easy to remember rule that will help beginners, not understanding its message, and managed to shoot an easy target down using hand picked counter examples devoid of meaning and full of analysis.

In its place he adds a set of mumbo jumbo. Gestalt psychology techniques. Greatest Area of Contrast. Stuff no one but him has ever heard of.

Now we've got a bunch of beginners jumping around, "Yippee, I don't need no stinking rules, I can let my inner genius free."

You don't teach by shooting down cliches with a grain of truth. You teach by showing the next step, something better.

Photography is also artistry. And artistry is not something that can be containerized by rules.

Artistry is a meaningless term. I define myself as an artist. Puffery. Photography is communication, and communication does follow protocols--or else it doesn't communicate. Go ahead, write using your own language. Learn the language of visual communication, or fail.

Some cameras can be set up to make very useable JPEG shots. But most people in a forum won't accept that, or allow anyone else to accept such a notion.

Because we're assuming you'd like to get better, not worse?

We come here ignorant and eager for knowledge, and we all get force-fed a bunch of technical nonsense.

What you rather be fed? Rules on Gestalt psychology techniques? Wow, that helps.

You don't want any rules, but you are eager for knowledge? That article had more rules than I've ever seen posted here. More analysis. You want the rules on edge-to-edge relationships?

That article wants you to replace a simple rule with a set of more complex one. He's not setting your free. "So many tricks and techniques can be applied to create a remarkable composition, which communicates clearly to your viewer." My point, which YOU missed. There is no art, only communication, using tricks and techniques.

Yes, rules of 3rds is dumbed down, but most fail to understand the underlying message.

The only thing that the rule of thirds does is put a box around your art. It's not a frame either, it's a prison. Do not go past this. It prevents. It shapes something that should be unshapeable. It tries to quantify emotion with math. It is the antithesis of artistry. It is the opposite of what you want. And what you want... That's easy. Freedom.

Kids with crayons have freedom. Then they learn perspective and shading and colors and you know, rules.

"The camera likes you". I'm sure you've heard of this. It's much like that. When you are free, you point the camera wherever you will. You use your mind to make it look right, but you use your heart too. It isn't a blind guess, it's intuitive creativity.

This tells me nothing about how to take a better photograph. Just chest beating.

Photography is not that complicated.

Agree, but most people can't seem to learn the few simple rules that would help them

 

[Abrak]

Rule of thirds, rule of odds, symmetry, motion, etc. are all ways to compose shots and are not steadfast...it's art as has been stated time and again. However, if you watch a well done TV show or movie, pay attention to the placement of the characters. Being a Downton Abbey fan, I've seen the scene several times where a solitary figure is strolling the grounds. That figure is NEVER in the middle of the scene.

Heck, even the final scene in one of the X-men movies has Wolverine standing outside of the school and he's in the left third of the shot.

David

 

[Biological_Viewfinder]

None of what you said was useful or worthwhile.

You attacked me from start to finish. It was just personal attacks rather than substance.

I don't have time for you or anyone like you.

This isn't school. You don't have to be a bully.

You shouldn't have been one in school. You shouldn't be one here.

The sad reality is that I'm suggesting a way to learn photography at a faster pace and you just want to argue.

IGNORED.

 

[whakapu]

Yeah there's no "rule of thirds", just a thirds aesthetic which may or may not please. But this "dynamic symmetry" is a whole other level of nonsense. If you doodle enough lines across any image you're bound to strike something that more or less lines up with some of them.

 

[FingerPainter]

This a great article

I'd be interested to know what makes you think this article is "great" rather than perhaps mildly interesting and unnecessarily negative about RoT.

by Tavis Leaf Glover written at Petapixel (no links to this site seem to be allowed by DPR). I hope people read it and stop with all the rule of thirds nonsense.

The nonsense in the article was the straw men the author threw up, the arguments he provided that failed to prove his negative points, and the cliche of myths, some of which actually seemed to be mythical themselves.

The article could have made better use of much of its subject matter if it had taken tone of "Moving Beyond the Rule of Thirds: Other Composition Techniques and Their Uses." As presented I fear for the babies in the bathwater.

 

[Dennis]

The biggest myth is 'rules of thirds'.

It is really the golden ratio

The rule of thirds is the golden ratio ?

I'm so confused.

- Dennis

 

[Bill Dewey]

This a great article

I'd be interested to know what makes you think this article is "great" rather than perhaps mildly interesting and unnecessarily negative about RoT.

by Tavis Leaf Glover written at Petapixel (no links to this site seem to be allowed by DPR). I hope people read it and stop with all the rule of thirds nonsense.

The nonsense in the article was the straw men the author threw up, the arguments he provided that failed to prove his negative points, and the cliche of myths, some of which actually seemed to be mythical themselves.

The article could have made better use of much of its subject matter if it had taken tone of "Moving Beyond the Rule of Thirds: Other Composition Techniques and Their Uses." As presented I fear for the babies in the bathwater.

priceless! You also make an incredibly interesting point in your last paragraph.

 

[Abrak]

Yeah there's no "rule of thirds", just a thirds aesthetic which may or may not please. But this "dynamic symmetry" is a whole other level of nonsense. If you doodle enough lines across any image you're bound to strike something that more or less lines up with some of them.

This very much sounds like you dont really understand dynamic symmetry or havent given it enough thought. It has nothing to do with doodle of lines and is based on geometry.

The underlying principle is pretty simple. If you draw, paint or take photo you are trying to depict a 3d image on a 2d format. A vertical or horizantal line is inherently non-dynamic. Consider this example below....



...or consider a human portrait taken with the person standing straight at you with his hands by his sides.

The human eye sees beauty and harmony in symmetry. So in drawing and painting artists used geometry to create diagonals that had symmetry. The 'basic armature' of a rectangle which consists of the 2 basic diagonals along with the 4 rectilinears actually creates 12 triangles all of which have identical proportions.



So instead of 'doodling enough lines' it is actually about the geometry of making ones doodles appear both dynamic and harmonious.

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rob collins

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[Abrak]

The article could have made better use of much of its subject matter if it had taken tone of "Moving Beyond the Rule of Thirds: Other Composition Techniques and Their Uses." As presented I fear for the babies in the bathwater.

I will admit the title is solely meant to be an 'attention grabber'. Still 'beyond the rule of thirds' would be equally misleading on the basis that the composition techniques he talks about were known at least a 1,000 years before the rule of thirds was dreamt up.

 

[Docno]

What's interesting, however, is that many of his examples of other compositional frameworks still conform to the principal of thirds. The Degas painting, the Henri Cartier-Bresson photo, etc.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the RoT principal is the only one that should operate or that it should not be combined with others or that it should be used in every image. But it is a useful learning tool to get people away from centering in every shot as my non-photo friends do when i lend them a camera.

The reason that many photos bear a resemblance to the ROT is because if you draw the basic armature of a 3:2 rectangle (ie a sensor) - the power points where the rectilinear's meet the baroque and sinister diagonals fall broadly on the ROT.



Cartier-Bresson was trained as an artist and studied geometry under Andre Lohte. Virtually all his photos have strong diagonals and many conform to the basic armature of the 3:2 rectangle.





--
http://www.salintara.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robcoll/

"The reason that many photos bear a resemblance to the ROT is because if you draw the basic armature of a 3:2 rectangle (ie a sensor) - the power points where the rectilinear's meet the baroque and sinister diagonals fall broadly on the ROT."

... which simply supports the notion that there is some validity to the Rule of Thirds. So we have at least two organising principles here, one of which can be treated as a subset of the other. The question is which one--the simpler or more complex one--best predicts aesthetic/emotional reactions to an image. Perhaps that study has already been done. But I am skeptical when a handful of carefully selected images are overlaid with some pattern as "proof" that said pattern determines the appeal of those images. [And the more complex the overlay, the more likely that some elements in the image will conform it].

 

[Bill Dewey]

The article could have made better use of much of its subject matter if it had taken tone of "Moving Beyond the Rule of Thirds: Other Composition Techniques and Their Uses." As presented I fear for the babies in the bathwater.

I will admit the title is solely meant to be an 'attention grabber'. Still 'beyond the rule of thirds' would be equally misleading on the basis that the composition techniques he talks about were known at least a 1,000 years before the rule of thirds was dreamt up.

 

[Abrak]

"The reason that many photos bear a resemblance to the ROT is because if you draw the basic armature of a 3:2 rectangle (ie a sensor) - the power points where the rectilinear's meet the baroque and sinister diagonals fall broadly on the ROT."

... which simply supports the notion that there is some validity to the Rule of Thirds. So we have at least two organising principles here, one of which can be treated as a subset of the other. The question is which one--the simpler or more complex one--best predicts aesthetic/emotional reactions to an image. Perhaps that study has already been done. But I am skeptical when a handful of carefully selected images are overlaid with some pattern as "proof" that said pattern determines the appeal of those images. [And the more complex the overlay, the more likely that some elements in the image will conform it].

Yes and no. 'ROT' has some validity with a '3:2 rectangle' which is why it is a 'modern rule' that is a popular simplification for photographers. It also coincides with the rabatment of a 3:2 rectanglre. The 'underlying problem' with the rule of thirds as generally depicted is that it is made up of horizantal and vertical lines which are inherently 'non-dynamic'.

We can be pretty bleeding certain that Bresson understood the underlying geometry of composition (whether he had heard of the rule of thirds is another matter). He studied geometry under Andre Lohte for a year and a half in 1917. When Cartier-Bresson was asked by Charlie Rose 'what makes a great composition' he replied 'geometry' and when he was then asked 'Are you born with it?' he replied 'No, it has to be cultivated'.

--
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[Hen3ry]

Sure, it really isn't a rule or law, but it is a darned useful suggestion!

The second myth is that you can ignore it!

The third myth is that the old "laws are made to be broken" does not apply.

After that, we pretty much run out of myths in respect of the RoT as far as I am concerned.