OK. so this was bugging me all night long and I have to finally just write it.
Ok, long post alert...
I agree in part, but disagree with my whole ethos.
Yes there is mileage in dividing the frame into thirds, artists have been doing it for centuries along with dividing the frame into fifths (often mistaken for
Golden Mean). It is a very useful visual tool, it allows you to see and assess the image and the balance by dividing the whole into *bite sized* and understandable segments. It somehow allows you to assess the whole by seeing how the *parts* combine.
But there is an inherent danger in the *current* understanding of the Rule of Thirds, (the ROT), in that the lines and the grid are what become important, it's the grid and the intersections that hold the significance rather than the image. It's difficult to explain in words as the whole theory is rather geared to an understanding of *The Grid* or the lines that define it rather than a visual understanding of the image. We are looking at the lines and the intersections rather than the image that exists entirely in the space between them.
I will try to demonstrate with an image or two of mine. If I asked how far across the building was you would not answer in meters but as a proportion. This is important, we see in divisions of a space and not as absolute distance when we confine a view by imposing a frame. When we stand in front of a view and look up, look down, to left and to right it doesn't change but remains consistent, we estimate distances in metres. However when we tilt the camera up or down and impose a limit, a frame around the image and view it vertically on a wall the actual proportions of land/sky affect out interpretation of space and scale. The subtleties of this and their implications are lost when we only look at and seek to understand *The Grid* upon which we make our decision of whether the image is *composed* or not rather than looking at and understanding the image that occupies the space between the lines.
In this image I've placed prominent lines or objects on the lines or intersections of The ROT. It conforms to our understanding of composition because it conforms to a pattern we have taught ourselves to recognise. It complies with our understanding and desire to believe that it is what makes our images good. To a certain extent it works. But it is also staid, static, one of a million similar because it concentrates on the placement of *things* rather than a recognition of the scene as a whole and how it's interpreted by a viewer. It only concentrates on how we consider things to be composed by the rules that we learn.
Here is the whole as I originally presented it (the one above is a crop only, nothing else):
It still is organised by thirds, but a division of light/dark and higher contrast to lower contrast. The greater proportion of sky tends to imply that the landscape occupies less of the space, it becomes smaller, more diminutive. The landscape is viewed as more expansive, more remote, more isolated in the bigger space. The high contrast in the foreground against the lower contrast in the background increases your sense of depth, the curve of the loch more prominent. There is more of a feeling of light, our visual understanding of light/dark changes because the proportions have changed, (we see different contrasts even though it's exactly the same). The first expresses my understanding of the rules of composition and the second my understanding of how I *feel* about the landscape.
This is lost when you concentrate on the grid and how you understand *The Rule* rather than the image and how the audience relates what they see to their memory, how they interpret it. It is a subtle and important shift in thinking. We invent rules because we want there to be an answer in the numbers, some magic in a formula that we can apply. But the reality is that when you take a photo you must understand how you see and feel about the subject and communicate that. It is only when this happens that images become your own personal view rather than a text book example of somebody else's lowest common denominator. Forget the grid and look at the spaces in between.
In the image below, how is your sense of depth affected by the relative difference in local contrast between the stone surfaces and the background? How does the area of sky influence the sense of isolation and the scale of the stones? How does the area of land affect your understanding of the scale of the landscape? These, I think, are all far more important questions than "what should I place on the grid lines and intersections?"
Food for thought, I hope...
