When the Rule of 3 Doesn't Apply

Sometimes the rule of three won’t apply well – particularly in landscape or architectural shots. In that case, “framing” will help focus the viewer’s eye and hold a picture together. Look at these two pictures I took last weekend (in bitter chilling weather)along CR300E in Wabash county. Which do you think “works” the best?

Less is More (Rule of 3s)

As in good, crisp writing (see: Hemingway, Ernest), less is also often more in photography. Thus is the power of the rule of threes. This portrait of a German girl from 35 years ago has three basic elements - the bicycle wheel, the girl, and the slightly out of focus and unobtrusive background.

The picture is simple but elegant (and of course the curve of the bicycle wheel also compliments the pleasing cures of the girls legs, face and hair). In other words, I paid attention to detail as I took this picture and composed everything in my viewfinder precisely.

Another Example of using "3rd"s

I took this picture in Greece, in 1973. Notice how the man’s head takes up nearly two thirds of the frame and the two boys above him take up only one-third. Notice too that there are really only three objects in the picture for your eye to linger on.

Wikipedia gives a pretty cool description of this rule here, and they note the rule dates back to 1797, but I’ve also read it dates back to the ancient Greek mathematicians who developed a trigonometric formula that defined beauty (women like Jennifer Aniston with sharply defined triangular faces are considered to this day to be more beautiful than women with round faces).

Rule of 3s/3rds

This is a nude portrait I took in Germany in 1972.

It illustrates both the Rule of 3s and the Rule of 3rds: notice that there are only three objects of interest in the picture – the window, the plant, and the nude. Notice too that nothing in the picture is centered – it is clearly composed in a 2/3’s – 1/3 pattern; The window and the plant take up 2/3’s of the picture and the woman takes up one third (the blank space above her was deliberately left in full shadow, and doesn’t count really as part of the picture in this case (because your eye does not focus on it), although background can count, particularly in the case where you get the blurred background known as “bokeh.”

Notice too that the woman is not centered top to bottom – she is in the bottom third of the picture. This is all quite intentional.