This week, it’s Tina’s turn to select the theme, and she has picked one for which I could find many examples. She writes, “This week our challenge is focused on one of the most well-known and widely-used ‘rules’ of photography, the Rule of Thirds.” Indeed, the rule of thirds is one of the first rules of composition that I learned, and I’ve practiced its application since my high school photography days.

There are many descriptions online about the use of the rule for in-depth descriptions, but Tina used a simple grid illustration like the one above and noted, “Basically, the rule is a compositional guideline that encourages placement of your primary subject on at least part of three equal rows and three equal columns…”

You may note in my opening image of the cattle egret, I’ve positioned the bird essentially over the vertical line that separates the center from the right third of the grid. For whatever scientific reasons described online elsewhere, the placement of the subject along or at the intersection of those lines, generally creates a strong, pleasing composition.

The rule of thirds is so popular with photographers, most cameras are designed to allow the overlay of a grid in the viewfinder so that an image may be composed in-camera with the rule in mind. I have the grid turned on for every camera that I own. It reminds me that a composition in-camera is often better than a re-compose in processing the photo. The above image features the symmetry that can be created while using the rule. The lower third of the image is along the painters’ feet which are also aligned with the yellow lines they are painting. The two men are placed along the left and right verticals of the grid and their heads are almost at the intersections of the grid in the upper, left, and right thirds.

Landscapes lend themselves to the Rule of Thirds. This image captured at the Shafer Canyon Overlook in Canyonlands National Park is an example. The top of the canyon is placed along the bottom of the top third of the image. The canyon’s left and right sides are in the left and right thirds, and the road provides a leading line from the bottom through the image to direct the viewer’s eyes into the far reaches of the canyon.

Sometimes the images all but compose themselves into the rule of thirds. This image was captured from our seats off the first base line just past first base. My telephoto lens brought the viewer closer to the action. As an aside, I was always a bit disappointed in this image because the f/5.6 lens opening wasn’t large enough to blur the background. Before using this photo, I loaded it into Luminar Neo and used the Portrait Bokeh function to create an artificial bokeh. It did a great job of separating the umpire and the catcher from the background, but I had to bring the batter’s head and part of his torso into the foreground by manually tweaking the mask. All in all, the extra work improved the image by pushing the players into the foreground nicely. The image almost looks 3D.

On our stop in Costa Rica while cruising toward the Panama Canal in 2013, we took a Jungle Cruise excursion on the Tarcoles River near Puntarenas. At one point, our tour guide hopped out of the boat with a small bag of chicken parts and proceeded to feed a “friendly” crocodile. I won’t speak to my opinion of the guide’s sanity.

The butterfly in this image was placed at the upper right intersection of the grid with the row of flowers lined along the upper horizonal grid. Thanks to TIna for allowing me to share some of my favorite images that demonstrate the use of the Rule of Thirds. To conclude my post, here are a few more examples.

One last comment, it’s OK to break the rule of thirds for whatever creative goal you might have. For landscape photography, I’ve found it valuable in improving the composition of my images. All of these images are available in an album on my FLickr site. For pixel peeping and metadata details on the images, visit my Flickr album here.

Next week, it’s Patti’s turn to create the theme for the challenge. If you’d like to join in our weekly themes but aren’t sure how to proceed, look here.

John Steiner