Rule of thirds: Kristine

I apologize--it's been a rather busy couple of weeks. Here are my submissions for rule of thirds:


This one only follows the rule of thirds in that approximately the bottom 2/3 of the image are taken up by cake.



In these two, my daughter is pretty clearly in the top right 1/3 position. I particularly love the action and the expression of joy on her face in these.

Somewhat by way of explanation, my brother in law got married yesterday and I've been madly getting things done so I could leave for the weekend. Here are a few pictures I took at the wedding:

Rule of Thirds- Sarah

Okay, does anyone else find it VERY hard to take pictures when it's so gray and rainy all the time? The lighting in my house isn't great, so I kind of bank on good sunlight, and when we don't have much of that, I don't take many pictures (not to mention that we have even less hours of sunlight to start with!). So, as a result, I didn't take a ton of pictures this week. Here is one of the cute kids in my kids preschool class on our trip to the Fire Station (I did take pictures of my own kids, but the didn't turn out that great in terms of the 'rule of thirds').Although he is towards the center of the picture, there is enough negative space to the right that is used to give context to the picture.

And here are a couple other pictures that I took in late August that I thought followed the rule of thirds.Here his hand, while some what centered, takes up about 2/3's of the picture.

p.s. I promise to take current pictures for the next challenge!

Rule of Thirds- Stephanie

Thanks for the tutorial of the Rule of Thirds, it has helped(tremendously)with my pictures. Before last week, I took photos like a novice, just aim and click. I like to compare my abilities to a term used in basketball: Prayer shot--a shot that has an extremely low chance of going in, usually a full court or half court shot. That is how I take pictures, not knowing the basic fundamentals and just hoping to get that "good shot". Sometimes I get lucky and score the Kodak moment, but I am hoping from this blog I can be more consistent.

I took a good number of pictures last week. The picture that I posted was my favorite. It may not be the best picture, but the bike rider, bike, and part of the road all fall on the left 1/3 segment of the picture. And the subject (the biker) is 1/3 compare to the 2/3 of space.

Rule of thirds: Jessica

I wish I could say that I took at least one picture a day, but I didn't. I have been thinking about this assignment a lot though. This was good for me, I usually don't think about this rule very often. I am also not very good a seeing if the rule was followed. The photo below is following the rule of thirds, right? Her eyes (and scraped up nose) are the focal point of the picture and they fall along the top line.
This photo does not follow the rule of thirds, but it works because the bars of the slide frame in his face. What do you think?
I did not take this photo this week but I thought it was a good example to show for positive and negative space. The subject is the positive space taking up 1/3 of the space, while the brick wall is the negative space taking up 2/3 of the space. Her eyes also fall along an intersection rather than being placed right in the middle of the photo.Let me know what you think, I can take any constructive criticism that you give! I just want to improve my photos and become more familiar with this rule.

Composition: Rule of thirds

How many times have you taken this picture:


You know, the one where you stick the subject smack dab in the middle of the photo and find, when all is said and done, it's just not a very interesting picture?

With few exceptions, the first instinct of most of us is to put the focal point of photo in the center. Unfortunately, this typically results in a flat, boring picture with unused space distributed in all the wrong places. It's far more interesting to put the focal point of an image off-center, preferably following the rule of thirds. Here is the image cropped so the eyes--the focal point of the face (in this image at least)--lie along a line about a third of the way down the image:


Still not a fabulous photo, but it's much better.

For reference, imagine an image is divided into thirds by a set of lines like this:


The focal point of an image should fall along one of those lines or at the intersections of two of the lines. Pictures that follow the rule of thirds tend to feel more balanced and are easier to look at. Another way of thinking of it is how you're using the negative and positive space in an image. The subject (positive space) of the photo should take up 2/3 of the image, leaving 1/3 on one side as negative space, or the subject should take up 1/3 leaving 2/3 negative space.

If you're already a pro at following the rule of thirds (or knowing when to use it and when to ignore it), I'm envious. The rest of us need to practice until placing the focal point of an image in the right spot becomes second nature.

This week's assignment is easy: take at least one picture every day. Look at how you're taking your pictures--do you follow the rule of thirds? What happens when you crop them to follow the rule of thirds? Did you take any pictures that you really like that don't follow the rule of thirds? What makes those ones work? While you're watching TV, looking at billboards and other ads, or looking at any sort of image online, notice where the focal point of the image is--how often do images follow or break the rule of thirds?

Post your favorite 2-3 (or so) images for discussion by next Monday (15 November). Label the post with your name and Rule of thirds. If you haven't finished your intro, please get that up too! If you took some pictures during the week that don't follow the rule of thirds initially but you can crop, show both versions. If you took some that work well in spite of breaking this rule, show those too. Above all, have fun and get familiar with the settings on your camera. We'll be playing with those in the not too far distant future.