Rule of Thirds

When I first started getting interested in photography, I started looking for websites that would help me get better. The one I stumbled upon in the early stages was Jodies Coston's Free Online Photography Course sponsored by the morguefile.com. It's a great place to start if you are looking for some help. Today's blog is about the Rule of Thirds and since I learned this rule from Jodies' website, I thought I would give some credit.

The Rule of Thirds is a simple rule that is easy to understand, remember, and implement, and it will immediately make a huge difference in your pictures. Without doing anything else, your pictures will begin to look more interesting and your friends and family will think you're becoming a good photographer, and they probably won't even be able to tell you what's so good about your pictures. That's one of the funny things about the Rule of Thirds because it's not rocket science, and when I tell you what the rule is you will think, "why didn't I think of that before?"

So here's the simple explanation:

To use the Rule of Thirds when composing a picture, pretend that there is a tic-tac-toe board on your view finder (some point & shoots even have this feature built-in). It would look something like this:



For some reason, when we first start taking pictures, we tend to put our subjects right in the middle of the frame. I don't know why we do this, but we do, and it's boring! We place horizons right in the middle of the frame. Again... boring! The rule of thirds will change that for you and give you not so boring pictures.

If you are taking a portrait, try placing the eye of your subject on one of the green dots. Putting your subject at one of the four intersections of the tic-tac-toe board is what the rule of thirds is about. If your picture has the horizon in it, place the horizon at either the top or bottom horizontal line of the board instead of in the middle.

I know it sounds simple and you may think that it won't make that big of a difference, but just try it and see how much more interesting your pictures become.