Opinions on rules of composition poll

Would like to hear your opinions on the "rules" of composition. Feel free to elaborate on your vote.

Unknown456 wrote in post #12988443
Would like to hear your opinions on the "rules" of composition. Feel free to elaborate on your vote.

Eh, I guess it could be one, the other, both, or neither.

I guess it just depends on the photographer's mindset. Learning about a "rule" can certainly help (at least for a little while). But I tend to think they'll be better off if they have at least a vague idea of WHY it's a "rule", and when to break it.

Composition can make or brake the photo more often than most of today photographers realize, IMHO.

'Rules are meant to be broken' mantra, often heard in discussions of this kind is actually wrong, or oversimplified, at best.
Rules are meant to be learned, understood and utilized first, before they are broken, in most cases.

Unfortunately, most of discussions of this kind begin and end with the Rule of Thirds.
Composition is much, much more that that!

Two books from the same author that I found useful and interesting lately:

http://www.amazon.com …TF8&qid=1314157​093&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com …TF8&qid=1314157​183&sr=1-1

Of course rules help. It's just an easy way to remember certain compositional elements. The rule of 1/3rds is one but so are leading lines, framing, balance, and other compositional tools. The real skill is knowing which compositional element to use in a certain situation. Sometimes the rule of 1/3rds is just what the shot calls for but at other times, it's the wrong thing to do.

Naturally rules are meant to be broken

But, at times it's a good guide look at some of the rules of composition. Not all subjects and situations are created equal.

gjl711 wrote in post #12988745
Of course rules help. It's just an easy way to remember certain compositional elements. The rule of 1/3rds is one but so are leading lines, framing, balance, and other compositional tools. The real skill is knowing which compositional element to use in a certain situation. Sometimes the rule of 1/3rds is just what the shot calls for but at other times, it's the wrong thing to do.

I don't even usually try to think in terms of rules. I'm still far from truly being there. But I think that I'd be better off just evaluating each picture on the basis of what will help that picture. If I know what I'm doing, then chances are that I'll end up following several "rules" just by mere coincidence.

You can't know you're breaking a rule if you don't know there is one.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #12989105
You can't know you're breaking a rule if you don't know there is one.

Why should you even have to know that you're breaking one?

If the entire point of the picture is to break rules, then yeah...you sort of would have to know what sets people off (or so I'd assume).

But if you're not operating under some kind of rebellious context, then why would knowing that you're breaking a rule even be necessary? I mean...I just tend to think that a picture works or it doesn't. When making a photograph, you can absolutely utilize N, M, O, X, Y, and Z if that particular picture calls for those things. But if those things are also "rules", then how does that help? You got those things anyway simply by giving the photograph what it needed. So at what point did you need to know that they ARE rules, when you're utilizing those rules (consistently and deliberately) without even knowing it?

Ok, so you don't know about or understand "look space" or "breathing space" and you do an entire series of portraits with the subject's nose crammed hard up against the side of the frame they're facing.

Think the client won't subconsciously feel there's something wrong?

Composition rules don't exist to please the shooter, they exist to please the viewer. If you want to go way off the deep end and do an entire avant garde series, hey, knock yourself out but if I'm sitting for you and you bring me portraits that make me look foolish, you're not getting paid.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #12989240
Ok, so you don't know about or understand "look space" or "breathing space" and you do an entire series of portraits with the subject's nose crammed hard up against the side of the frame they're facing.

Think the client won't subconsciously feel there's something wrong?

Composition rules don't exist to please the shooter, they exist to please the viewer. If you want to go way off the deep end and do an entire avant garde series, hey, knock yourself out but if I'm sitting for you and you bring me portraits that make me look foolish, you're not getting paid.

You seem to be sort of operating under the assumption that one has to know that there's a rule prohibiting X, before finding out that X often doesn't work.

Call them rules, conventions, rules of thumb, strong suggestions, youmightwannas...

I don't really care. Like I said, you break "rules" to satisfy yourself but you take the risk of running afoul of accepted expectations.

The average Joe or Jane does not expect to see portraits with noses crammed against the edge of the frame and a bunch of empty space behind the subject. A shot of a tree sitting all alone on a ridge wil not hook a viewer if it's sitting dead center and the horizon cuts the frame in half. A spiral staircase flows more naturally if the spiral starts in a corner and isn't screwing itself right up the center of the frame. An odd number of elements in the frame has a natural dynamic that an even number of objects does not have.

These aren't my rules. They're long-established compositional elements based in geometry and nature.

If you don't want to believe me go read a book or ask an art teacher. Otherwise, stop trying to tell everyone that such things don't exist. They do and they have since around the time of the Greeks.

If nothing else, look at the results of the poll so far...

I think of "rules" as being similiar to a compass. They won't tell you how to get to your destination (the final result), but will point you in the right direction.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #12989105
You can't know you're breaking a rule if you don't know there is one.

I'm reminded of "ignorance of the law is no excuse"

As I see it, the main problem with "rules of composition", is that often become so ingrained in those who firmly believe in them, that they end up focusing more on doing it "right", than on doing it well.

I love how these threads degenerate into poo throwing competitions, they are not rules they are conventions that our brains have either been conditioned to, or naturally find aesthetically "appropriate".

Why on earth would somebody not find that a useful thing to understand?