Photo Tip: Rule of Thirds

One of the first things a student photographer learns is the ‘Rule of Thirds’. It’s a common priciple that some photographers learn about and some self taught photographers ‘discover’. It is known to be the basis of a great well balanced, interesting compostion of a photograph.

Let’s start by saying that there are multiple ways that the Rule of Thirds can be understood. All of these understandings of the rules can also be broken (I know, I know. I’m talking about a ‘rule’…then talking about breaking it! I’m sure that gets some peoples adrenaline going although let me say we are talking more of a concept than an actual rule). Say you decide to not follow the rule, or ‘break it’…this does not mean you photos will all be horribly unbalanced and uninteresting. There are always exceptions.

So what is the Rule of Thirds? It’s the basic concept of breaking an image down into 3 parts both horizontally and vertically creating 9 parts with 4 intersecting areas as shown below:

As you are taking a photo, you’ll mentally be doing this in your mind through the view finder or LCD screen. With this grid, you can identify four important points of the image of which you should consider placing points of interest as you frame your photo. You now also have 4 lines that you can use to position different elements in your photo.

The theory of the Rule of Thirds is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your image becomes ‘well balanced’ and ‘interesting’ and will enable the viewer to look at it more naturally. Below is an example of of placing the focal point (the eye of ‘Elvis’) on an intersection.

Placing your focal point on an intersecting point creates interest to the eye because it’s being drawn away from the middle.

Next, we are going to show you a slightly different version of this Rule of Thirds with the same concept of trying to line your focal point up with an intersecting point. We are going to add some more objects into the photo that are different focal lengths away. I wanted to create scene. The woman, my sister in this case, could be leaning against a rail that was on the side of a road, by a garden or practically anywhere but I wanted to show she was on a farm. I decided to add in the farm shed, silo and house.

When we split up the photo into the equal 9 parts, you’ll see that Nicole is located in the left third. The farm house is in the right third and I left space in the middle. Although where I was focusing (her face) is not on an intersecting point it is very close. What helps bring focus to her is the rail which she is leaning on. It creates a leading line that runs straight to her leaving the farm house as a secondary focal point item.

Lastly, I want to talk about the Rule of Thirds and negative space. The understanding is to leave negative space everywhere except for a third of the image. Below is a great example of a photo I took in Hull, MA. I absolutely loved the house, telephone wires and the row boat and felt compelled to make that the focus. I could have easily have added in more of the pond or zoomed in to see the house more but I enjoyed the negative space and felt it created a stronger image.

When you have some time, look through your photos, especially if you haven’t heard of the Rule of Thirds and see if your eye is naturally already positioning your focal points as listed above!  Using the Rule of Thirds comes naturally to some photographers but it usually takes a bit of time to practice. While learning how to use the Rule of Thirds remember to always ask yourself:

What are the points of interest in the shot?

Where should they placed in the frame?

Once again, breaking the rule can result in some absolutely amazing photograph so once you’ve practiced using the Rule of Thirds properly you can experiment with breaking it on purpose to see what becomes of your photos! In post production the Rule of Thirds can be used as well. You can easily reframe images so that they fit within the rules. Try experimenting with some of your old photos!

Have fun shooting! – Meg