The rule of thirds is a very useful tool for composing images in photography. And to top it off, it’s free! Doesn’t require any add on equipment to your camera, any shoe mounts, anything like that! This article will attempt to demystify the mysterious Rule of Thirds. This post is a follow up from my basic photography tutorial and tips for point and shoot camera.
To follow this rule, simply take a photo and divide it up into three sections vertically and three sections horizontally. Now, as you can see from doing this there are three boxes on the top, three in the middle, and three at the bottom. The box in the middle of all of them is the center. This compositional rules basically advises you not to take pictures in that middle box. When you put the object smack bang in the middle, not only it look amateurish, but it is also boring.
Put the object into intersection of thirds
What this does is makes you have to try and position the subject so that he/she or it is not dead center. This creates more visually interesting images.
When you take a photo of a person, the main focal point will be the eyes. Now, you can take a photo of a person dead center, however, follow the rule still! Put the eyes anywhere but the middle box. You can put the eyes in the top box instead. Their body will be dead center but their face will be in the upper area.
Photo from DPS rule of thirds tutorial
Now, when you follow this rule you also need to be careful to leave plenty of head room when shooting people. This room is space around the head and will make your photo not look claustrophobic. Also, if your person is looking towards the left, leave plenty of room at the left side of the photo and less on the right.
Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) on the thirds
So what software can you use to help you with this?
Lightroom is always my favourite post processing software. When you use the crop tool in lightroom, you will be presented with the rule of thirds helper to let you crop better.
Lightroom helps you compose better with rule of thirds
So even if you forgot to compose the rule of thirds, you can have that peace of mind knowing that Lightroom can fix it for you later. However, do not grow dependent on it, as you lose pixels/resolution every time you crop.
Further Reading on Rule of Thirds
You can learn more from these resources:
- Digital Photography School
- Wikipedia
- Digital Camera Magazine
- Find some inspiration from flickr
- This amazing ebook will help you immensely in learning photo techniques
If you like this post, you might also like:
- 12 Everyday Photography Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid
- 9 Zoo Photography Tips & Tutorial
- [Lightroom Tutorial] Cropping while breaking aspect ratio
- How To: Basics of Photography in 15 Minutes
- Tutorial: Learn How to do Panorama Photography part 1 (The Photo Shooting)
Join hundreds of photographers and get all my photography tips & tricks for FREE!
Subscribe to my blog via RSS or get free email updates.
