Theme Thursday: Rule of Thirds

Are you ready for another redundant tutorial from someone whose main source of photographic instruction comes from Pinterest?

Good.

This week, I thought I'd tackle the Rule of Thirds.

While I have no problem with cropping my pictures, or monkeying around with levels post-processing, it seems that professional photographers do.  Their "theory" is that if you take the time to set up the picture correctly before you take it, you don't need to fix flaws afterwards.

Hahaha.  Wait.  What?

Now I'm certainly not going to stop using Photoshop, but I could take a little more time framing my pictures in the viewfinder before taking the picture.  And the rule of thirds is an easy way to help in that department.

I started with this picture, because it's warm and beachy, which is nice since it's cold and snowy outside right now:

There's Jude, Colleen's Eamon, and Joaquin, playing in the sand at almost-Cape Cod last summer.  Cute picture, but let's see how well I did framing it into thirds.

Ok, so as I understand it, mentally breaking a scene into thirds, then lining your shot up so that focal points fall on the lines, makes for pleasing composition, thus eliminating the need to crop.

I did ok-ish on this shot.  I should have taken the picture a few seconds earlier, so that Jude would have been on a line, instead of to the right of one, and I should have attempted to get the horizon centered on another line, but I got Eamon spot on.

The eye is naturally drawn to the point where the horizontal and vertical thirds meet.  Professional photographers try to get their focal points in these areas.  Drunk Monkey photographers like myself just wing it, and are happily surprised when something winds up in those sweet spots (again, Eamon for the win!)  Notice that if I'd raised the camera up slightly, lining the point where the sand meets the water with the lower horizontal line, I would have gotten Eamon's head perfectly in one of those bulls eyes.  This would have made for a better picture, but a creeped out Colleen emailing me asking why I'd put her boy's head into a crosshair.

Now, with the wonders of cropping (ha!  Try and stop me!)  I can trim here and there and fix the mistake I may not have made had I known about the Rule of Thirds last summer:

So now Jude's more on a line, and Eamon's head is closer to an intersection point.

   

Like I said, I don't foresee me ditching all my Photoshop wonders, but the Rule of Thirds is a simple enough concept to add to my skill set.

Don't forget- this Thursday's linkup theme is "Happiness" or "Joy".  See you then!