One foggy day

Kalyt · Feb 29, 2016

Following the talk about how to crop and balance pictures. Yesterday I looked through some of my pictures and I can see the way I usually place the important objects in an image are either in the left or right side. I do this because, I mainly use the Rule Of Third in my pictures and try to get the important object to sit between the intersections lines.

But to the point. I would like to hear whether there are other and more interesting way to crop these images and what your thoughts on compositionen. You are also welcome to comment on anything.

Tim Tucker · Feb 29, 2016

Back to the dots again I'm afraid.

Most importantly though, the answer is not in the words that go with the examples but in seeing the difference in the examples themselves.

"Thirds" or "the Rule of Thirds" (The ROT), is mis-understood and overused. What is it?

We see by division. If you apply the rectangle to contain your image you supply a grid which we naturally sub-divide into equal segments and use much as a ruler to measure scale and distance. Height, for instance, is a measure of the height of the subject compared to the height of the frame. Distance is how high in the frame the object is placed, etc. Compare these two crops:

Already we've diminished the importance of the vertical thirds by attaching something of higher significance to height in the frame.

Because we see equal divisions so well we can easily recognise when the image is divided into thirds. But does it really attach any other significance other than the logic photographers seek to impose?

No. It is simply an imaginary line that is twice as far from one edge as it is the other, (notice we reference it as it's distance from the frame).

As for the intersections in thirds, they are all off-centre and on the diagonals, see my previous post that demonstrates the visibility of diagonals in the frame.

Here are some dots

:

Thirds, when you provide the whole grid you can see the rhythm and pulse of it, like an equal beat of a drum.

See what happens when we displace that rhythm from the frame:

We see the rhythm in the dots but not in the whole image, it becomes unbalanced and disconnected to the frame.

See what happens when we just place abitrary points on an imaginary line (horizon on thirds?):

There is no rhythm because you've not defined any, you only have one line.

See what happens when we define enough of the beats so you can see the rhythm:

We now see rhythm and shape because there are enough points on the grid to define it, we see a relationship between the dots. But is there a better way?

Here we have rhythm and shape that's not defined by thirds, because they are all the same distance from the frame they have a relationship and you see them as a pattern rather than disconnected dots (remember thirds is a direct reference to the dots position from the frame). Compare this to the dots in a line.

Now ask yourself if placing the horizon on thirds really has all that much significance?

The answer is contained in many of these patterns. Just as my previous patterns showed the importance of centre lines and diagonals in balance, so in these dots can you see the importance of how objects relate to the frame. Thirds is just a symmetrical pattern where the image is divided by three, in the example in the previous post we see the pattern when it is divided by two. And the last one shows you can attach a relationship between objects at the top and bottom of your image (horizon and foreground?) simply by how far you place them from the frame.

And we've just looked at B&W dots. Rhythm also exists between blocks of colour and contrast. Michael Freeman's book "The Photographer's Eye" covers all this ground in a much more practical and far less 'arty' way. It's well worth reading.

Kalyt · Feb 29, 2016

@Tim Tucker Thanks again for the lesson, it's really useful. You have a lot of interesting points especially on the Thirds. Perhaps I should try to put the rule of third in the background for a time and focus a bit more on how to place the subject in relation to the frame.

I'll have a look at that book you suggest. I've read a few og his books before but not the one you mention.

Derrel · Feb 29, 2016

The so-called rule of thirds as it relates to photography is a modern "for dummies" type of shortcut that, according to one source, was first published in Popular Mechanics in the 1970's, as a sort of "Quick Tips" hack for people who really had little experience in taking decent photos. There is soooooo much more to composition than just, "Where in the frame do I put 'X' ?" There was an older landscape painting idea of a rule of thirds, involving roughly one-third of the space for the sky, 1/3 for the foreground, 1/3 of the painting for the main subject's area, but that too was a hackish idea, facile, rigid, and ultimately dumb and one that never gained much traction--until some freelance write dreamed up the so-called rule of thirds to sell a quickie article.

The simply "rule of thirds" is pretty much the 1970's equivalent of a clickbait web-era "listicle" article, banged out in an hour.

Your original composition would look better with some of the top cropped away, and about 20 percent of the far right hand side eliminated. I'm not fond of Tim's crop at all, nor the square cropped image. Your photo really was not composed in such a way that just cropping it will make it a really nice image.

You did a good job conveying the sense of fog, but it's just NOT adequate to follow a made-up 1970's "rule of thirds" which is utterly inadequate as a theory to base composition on: there are many more issues in composing. Lines, shapes, masses, textures, hues, tonal values, and also things like variety, unity, harmony, dissonance, repetition. This picture for example, has a large, light-tonal value, mostly color-free fog area on the left, and on the right it has repeating, discordant lines--lines formed by the dark branches of the trees.

I do not see Tim's square crop as the best representation of this scene. I have an entirely different envisioning of the shot--and it INCLUDES using the left-side large blocks of landscape as elements that define distance, and the pasture landscape; the single cow is grazing at the edge of the oak trees; his square cop uses a close-in framing that eliminates the idea of distance, and creates a strong diagonal element by lopping off the entire left side, and then making the diagonal line of the tree-tops the most-important feature....I don't see the scene that way, not that close-up, and also minus all the distance and minus the fog effect that comes from showing near/far, and the gradual dimming of the "far". That is why I see the image as optimally being more-panoramic (wider in aspect ratio) in format and absolutely not a square-ish image. I envision this with that strong diagonal of the tree-tops that leads upwardly and diagonally out of the frame eliminated entirely.

[OMG...I just edited this to remove a very embarrassing typo!!!]

Derrel · Feb 29, 2016

One of the things about simply taking someone else's photo, and then cropping it to try to make a better photo is that all the decisions were made by the photographer, and we as the image-cropper and image editor after the fact have to determine what the image's intent might have been.

The two crops are two entirely different pictures. One eliminates the wide-open field, and uses the strong, green diagonal as a major element, and keeps the entire image foggy, light, and "close-in", where my horizontal crop eliminates the strong upward-and-out-of-the-frame diagonal by cropping off the tree tops, burns down darker the shadows under the trees, darkens the very-closest grasses across the bottom of the frame, and then very subtly lightens the grass right below the stag, and adjacent to the deliberately-darkened trees in the woods shadow. I'm trying to get that feeling of foggy day, LATE afternoon,animal-keeping-close-to-cover.

A square image that optimizes the closest-distances is what Tim's cropping created. I went for a more-wide, less-tall image. The issue here is that the original shot had the deer very,very small overall...we're trying to place a tiny, black animal within a frame. As a former deer hunter, I see this as the behavior of an animal that feeds more toward dark, at the edge of the woods. I do not think this is a bovine.

I mean this in the best possible way, but this image was a tough one to improve dramatically by cropping; I'm not really 100 percent behind Tim's square crop or my rendition of this photo either.

Tim Tucker · Feb 29, 2016

Derrel said:
One of the things about simply taking someone else's photo, and then cropping it to try to make a better photo is that all the decisions were made by the photographer, and we as the image-cropper and image editor after the fact have to determine what the image's intent might have been.

The two crops are two entirely different pictures. One eliminates the wide-open field, and uses the strong, green diagonal as a major element, and keeps the entire image foggy, light, and "close-in", where my horizontal crop eliminates the strong upward-and-out-of-the-frame diagonal by cropping off the tree tops, burns down darker the shadows under the trees, darkens the very-closest grasses across the bottom of the frame, and then very subtly lightens the grass right below the stag, and adjacent to the deliberately-darkened trees in the woods shadow. I'm trying to get that feeling of foggy day, LATE afternoon,animal-keeping-close-to-cover.

A square image that optimizes the closest-distances is what Tim's cropping created. I went for a more-wide, less-tall image. The issue here is that the original shot had the deer very,very small overall...we're trying to place a tiny, black animal within a frame. As a former deer hunter, I see this as the behavior of an animal that feeds more toward dark, at the edge of the woods. I do not think this is a bovine.

I mean this in the best possible way, but this image was a tough one to improve dramatically by cropping; I'm not really 100 percent behind Tim's square crop or my rendition of this photo either.

I entirely agree with you Derrel, my crop completely ignored Kalyt's original intent. I was trying to show not only that it's how you arrange the elements within the frame, but that symmetry, balance and composition as a whole is entirely about how you place the frame around your subject. The ideas presented are not really about cropping but seeing how this works as you move around the subject with camera in hand.

Derrel · Feb 29, 2016

You hit the nail on the head and drove it home in one,single hammer blow, Tim. She asked how to improve her photography, and you basically summed it up in one sentence: "The ideas presented are not really about cropping but seeing how this works as you move around the subject with camera in hand."

BOOM! There's a decade's worth of wisdom in just the last half of your sentence, beginning with your use of the word seeing.

Your ideas in your posts above were really not about cropping after the fact, but gave some sound strategies for how to compose at the camera stage. I thought your square format image idea would have made an EXCELLENT picture if the camera had been maybe 100 feet to the right, and if it had been framed in the field and shot on a square format camera like a Hassy 500C or a Bronica SQ-A (at least as I envision how that small wood was configured), but that wasn't in the image you and I had to work with.

I thought her image was a tough challenge for an after-the-shot crop as a way to improve the rendering of the scene.

I have a lot of respect for the way you approach composition, and also for how you feel about "defining the frame", often with a border added in post. I always read your posts regarding composition with great interest.