[CT]

I thought I'd do a 'sticky' explanation on this because it's obviously going to keep arising all the time.

We're influenced by The Rule Of Thirds (ROT) in many images pictures and paintings we look at, often without realizing it. What is it? Well it's basically a format for good composition used by artists and photographers. How it works is fairly simple, although there are two occasions as photographers when we can use it - the first being when we compose an image in the viewfinder - the second being when we crop a larger image, when we can often apply the ROT to achieve a more pleasing picture.

In practice you need to imagine your viewfinder or picture being divided into thirds equally along both it longest and shortest sides. If it's a aquare picture you still divide by thirds and it doesn't matter whether the picture is horizontal (landscape) or upright (portrait}

Here's a pic by Wazza which is a crop from a larger image and which I've roughly divided into thirds.



The intersections where the lines cross are the points we're interested in. If an element of the picture falls on one or more of these intersections we can say it conforms to the ROT and it's often desirable if some element in the picture connects two or more of these thirds. In this picture you can see how the neck of the giraffe falls over a 3rd intersection, and the neck leads the eye to another 3rd right over the head which is also the focal point of the picture, so altogether the photo works well as a pleasing composition.

We're not working with the slide rule by any means - we're not aiming for these points with precision accuracy, simply aiming to get key elements of the picture at or around these 3rd intersections, and there will always be 4 of them. You don't have to use all 4 points, in fact you rarely will, and often you'll use just one or two.

Here's another example - a picture by Kenco.



See how the bench in the foreground is over a 3rd and the strong diagonal line of the benches carries the eye to another 3rd which happens to be the 4th bench along. It comes across as a nicely composed image, but a person sitting on that 4th bench along as a focal point would have been pretty well perfect.


Lastly a cracking shot by Aeryk



The body of the lad is nicely over a 3rd and his head as near a damn it, is at another. You get so involved in looking at this shot that you can't help but follow the lad's line of sight to where he's aiming that stone, and it leads right to another 3rd intersection. Even though there's actually nothing there of any particular interest, it's a great example of a 3rd working strongly for Aeryk here. Aeryk may actually never take a better shot than this one.

That's basically all there is to it.Get used to looking at pictures and applying the Rule Of Thirds to them. You'll start seeing it everywhere - it's very obviously used in many paintings by The Old Masters and pretty well everyone else - but more importantly you'll grasp a fundamental of composition which will aid your shots enormously. Don't ask me why or how this works beyond the fact that our eyes are subconsciously drawn to those 4 points in a picture, and when we put key elements there, and link them, we satisfy some natural sense of harmony and balance in the viewer, even if they don't understand why. In short, you have a powerful tool at your disposal to influence someone to prefer your pictures over those of someone not using it.

NOW!

It's a great rule to know and to be aware of but it isn't carved in stone. It isn't a rule to be slavishly followed. If you prefer to do it some other way that looks right to you, then it IS right, but the ROT is infinitely preferable to just always plonking your main subject in the middle of the photo regardless of the subject matter.

[dod]

That's about as good an explanation as I've seen There is a ROT plug in somewhere for doing a quick composition check.

[lolyton]

Nice explanation CT, some good examples especially the bench one!

[IanC_UK]

I really need this one ! lol Thanks for the explanation !

[Oz]

Great stuff again, CT.

I'd been wandering aimless with my pics until I picked this up from these forums, and then I did some candid at work, along with some else from with the team I work in. We both took pretty much the same pics and our cameras are similar 5Mp vs 4Mp, but across the board my pics were preferred - why? Cos I took what I could, and PS'ed them to roughly follow the ROTs. It took me less than 1/2 hour to cover all 36 pics, of which I published 10 on our intranet, so it was time well spent. My colleague just snapped and left them as that - I light levelled the ones I liked but I didn't do any further PS in any way (she thought they were ok as they were so I left them).

For me, my pics mostly didn't follow the ROT at first, and were pretty boring IMO but with a bit of work it lifted them above the rest....

[Steve]

Fantastic guide CT. [smilie=t:

With your permission and the permission of the members whose photos you have used so effectively, I would also like to use this guide on the main section of the site. I am sure it will prove to be an excellent reference for many, many people. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to create such a great article.

[CT]

My privilege and my pleasure Steve.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by CT

My privilege and my pleasure Steve.

Thank you sir, I will try to get it formatted and uploaded over the weekend if I get time [smilie=t:

[Steve]

Matt has managed to format and upload your guide is super fast time so if you want to see it in all it's glory you can find it on the front of the site or directly by clicking the link below

http://www.thephotographyforums.com/...&Itemid=70

Once again thanks very much CT and also to Matt for the efficient and super fast convertion

[Matty]

Bonjour!

[CT]

As long as we don't start saying " The ROT's set in" :click:

[ppuga]

Excellent Info!!!

Thanks, this will be very usefull for all of us!!

[Aeryk01]

Wonderful explanation, CT. The photo is actually a crop of a much larger one, and although the "line of sight" wasn't intentional, the placing of my nephew in the finished crop was indeed intentional. Thank you for such a simple yet detailed explanation of the rule. [smilie=t:

Aeryk may actually never take a better shot than this one.

[smilie=l: