Photography Rules & Composition

Marcus Curran

Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is a composition of thumb in the visual arts industry, for example you can see this rule being used in paintings, photography, and design. The purpose of this rule come from a theory that an image should be imagined as an equally divided image consisting of 9 equal squares. The reason for this is because the important composition elements of the image should be placed along the lines or their intersections. By using this method and aligning the subject along the lines then it said to create more tension, energy, and also interest to the image compared to an image with the subject simple placed in the center. Below is an example where this rule has been used to construct this image, as you can see the main subject, the bottle, is placed to the left side directly centered to the vertical line. Also the top half of the bottle is mainly in the top section of the image, and the bottom half of the bottles in the bottom section. The main subject is not the only element which follows the rule of thirds because in the background you can see that the photography has been taken so that the bottom of the mountains and the tops of the trees align the the top horizontal line as much as possible.

Rule of Thirds
My Examples Below are two examples where I have tried to take a photograph using the rule of thirds. Unfortunately I havent been able to master the method in my first attempt, as you can see in the example to the left nothing in the background aligns up with the lines and the main subject (the folder) looks like it has just carelessly been placed there. In the example to the right again the person is way to far past the left vertical line where he should be nearly centered to the line, his body features should be clearly in on box not overlapping two.

Perspective & Vanishing Point

Perspectives is a method used in photography, it is often used to create illusions where people place themselves by objects. Below is an example of a perspective illusion, as you can see in this image the rucksack appears to be giant compared to the man who we all know is bigger. Vanishing point is another method similar to perspective used by photographers. In the example below you can see the train track rails start wide apart and then gradually get closer and closer until they vanish off the image. This is an illusion because we know that rail tracks run parallel to each other, this illusion has occurred because of the angle the photograph has been taken.

Perspective & Vanishing Point

Below are some examples that I have taken to try and create the illusions that many other photographers use. To the left I tried to created perspective between the person and the cone to try and make the person look really small. The other two images are ones where I have tried to create a vanishing point, the image in the middle does actually work really well as the path way seems to get closer in width the further away. The image to the bottom right is not a good example because the photograph has been taken to the left of the corridor so you cannot see the vanishing point, if the photograph had been taken standing in the middle of the corridor then it would be easier to see the vanishing point.

Frames
Photographers often use a method called framing to focus on a specific building, person, or object. they do this by having the focused object surrounded by something to create a frame so the object is completely the main focus of the image.

In the image to the right you can see that the building is the main focus in the image, this is because the photographer has put the focused building in a frame that is made from leave of the arrangement of the trees. This frame was not intended to be there but because it is there it gives the perfect opportunity to create a good looking photograph.

Framing
Here are some examples of framing photography that I have tried to do. Starting with the photo on the left, this is not a grate example because the persons head is not clearly in a frame of the rectangular paper. The image in the middle is a decent example of framing photography because the persons face is clearly in a frame which was not intended to be a frame. The only downfall with this example is the railing in the background ruins to image slightly. With the final image again it works well as frame that was not intended to be one, because the glass though has a texture on it distorts the image and the glass reflects the flash light, I tip I can learn from this would be to have the flash light turned off if taking a photograph through glass.