Photog Friday-Composition Continued...Rule of Thirds

Hi'ya folks! Happy Friday :-)

I love helping out other photographers and enthusiasts. I have received wonderful feedback from people about Photog Friday so I am happy to announce that I will be continuing this weekly post! To those of you that are just joining us, you can check out my story by clicking here. I am not an expert, but I am studying and practicing photography on a daily basis and decided that I wanted to share my journey with you.

Let's get started....

I have to admit, when I learned this little composition trick - I started seeing significant growth in my work so hear it goes… The Rule of Thirds....

When you look through your viewfinder, try and imagine the picture you see cut into thirds both vertically and horizontally using two vertical lines and two horizontal lines spread evenly spaced throughout the frame. Some cameras have the option to display your gridlines in the viewfinder to use as a guide so you may want to check your manual.  Now, using these lines as a guide, try to keep the focus of your main subject at one of the thirds...

For example in the picture below, if you can imagine putting a grid over it, you would see that her eyes line up with the top horizontal third and almost right in line with the right vertical third. Doing this gives the subject a very specific background for the audience to see and feel without taking away from the subject. Can you imagine if she was dead center in the middle of the frame? The picture wouldn’t have the flowy (Yes, I think I just made that word up) elements that I think it has right now. It gives the wind that is blowing her hair and the grass a very specific direction...

In the picture below, I have the dog in the top one-third and slightly over the left one-third of the frame. This composition allows the audience to see where the dog came from and where he is moving to. If you are going to take pictures of animals in motion, it is often important to follow the rule of thirds because most of the time, the audience will want to see where the animal is moving to and what they are like in their natural element.

The rule of thirds helps significantly with the story telling part of photography. It makes the audience want more (in a good way).

Try to never put the horizon in the middle of your picture...you want to show the tallness of the trees, the depth of the sky, or the beauty of a field of flowers....(notice the road ends and the horizon begins right at the bottom 1/3 line)

Last, but not least….there are some times when you must fill the frame with a beautiful face….The only thing to remember about this is that you will want to focus on the eyes at the top third of the picture…

Until next Friday,

Stacy Hart