Rule of Thirds
The Rule of Thirds is an important concept in the photography world. To help practice using the Rule of Thirds, you would need to use/visualize a grid on your camera screen that is divided by three lines going vertically and horizontally. The purpose of this is to put the subject of the photo along those lines so that the viewers’ eyes would involuntarily be drawn to that part. It’s also important to keep in mind that the subject CANNOT be in the very center of the photo. Lastly, during the use of the Rule of Thirds, photographers should be mindful of the background to give the final photo a nice, finishing touch. To put these rules into examples, we can use them to describe how a photo of a person close up would be takes. The photographer may want to put the person’s face on the left side of the center line going vertically. He/she might then put the person’s eyes along the center of the line going horizontally. For the background, there might be a brick wall, but it isn’t completely against the wall and the photo is taken from a little bit of distance from it. This would add depth to the photo and make it more interesting. I quickly picked up the pattern and use of the effect, but it got much easier towards the end. In my experience, it was easy to imply the Rule of Thirds to my photos, sense my camera provides a Rule of Thirds grid. The challenging part was finding objects with an interesting background to take a picture of. I am excited to use this technique for my photos in the future. -Marie Valouiski
