Rule of thirds

Once in our life every one of us must have heard about tha fact that the subject in a picture has to be on the focal points of the pictures or on the lines of force. Ok but what are the focal points? Let's have a better look:

In the upper picture you can easily see lines of force. They are vertical and horizontal and divide the picture in nine equal parts, focal points are where these line cross on each other (green dot). These way of dividing the picture is called rule of thirds, It has always been used in pictures, from paintures to fotography, to steal the attention of the viewer.

You have to decide which are the elements to be inside the central frame and wich ones you have to keep outside.
In this world where cameras are going to set autofocus and exposure automatically (at least they should) what turns a bad picture to a good one is composition.

For every picture we can decide boundaries of the image (aka cropping). We can even decide the point of view and set up people and objects where we want.
When you are taking a picture of a static object you are supposed to set the focal points where you want to set the attention in the image.

There are some rules that help you to know where to put these points, ofc you are not oblieged to use these points but at least is important to know these rules.

Rule of thirds:
Landscape photographers are really attached to this rule that, actually, works well for every kind of other subjects. Rule of thirds says that instead of positioning tha main interest subject in the middle of the picture (can be boring) is better put it on the cross of thirds (on the lines that are dividing the picture in 3 regular parts.

In the upper pictures you can see the overlapping of grid of rule of thirds. Putting the boat on the upper part suggest us that the aim of the author is look the reflection on the water. We could consider even to cut completely the boat from the picture, but it could be too minimalistic.
Even the mast of the boat is on the line of thirds, the small space after the prow of the boat suggest a movement of it (even if it is static).
Landscape pictures

In ladscape pictures, the rule of thirds is used to focus more on the close up or on the sky (putting the part that you want to be more important on the second third of the image). In a simple way the horizon of your panorama has to be on one of the horizontal line.

So if you want to focus the attention on close up you will find this situation:

Subjects of main interest are on the cross of the lines (threes on the low left image, mountain on high right). Our eyes are focused on the horizontal line where there is even the upper rules of thirds line.

The same thing is for vertical pictures.

Portrait
On portrait rule of thirds has to be applied to tha main parts of the subject. They can be the eyes for the close-ups, the face for an half-bust and whole figure.
So it's better keep this subject on the focal points (so not fully in the center of the image) in order to create more intererest in the picture.







Credits goes to gianpaolo62 on HDblog, sorry for my bad english but is not my mother tongue.