By TOMMY WILLIAMS / L’Observateur / January 25, 1999

Have you ever looked at your own photographs and found that some were much more appealing than others, but couldn’t exactly explain why? Even when viewing two pictures of the same subject matter, one seemed to catch your attention more than the other. The first photo, as far as you can remember, youhad the subject dead center in the viewfinder when you snapped the shutter. Thesecond photo was different. You accidentally fired the shutter before you hadthe subject correctly centered, or at least what you thought was correct. Thereal difference between the two photos was the “composition” of the subject matter and background.

Composition involves some chemistry, but not by way of the use of chemical components. You arrange and position the components of a photograph to createa visual chemistry, namely the subject and background. The best examples ofhow to use composition are calendars, especially scenic calendars. They makethe greatest use of the most basic tool of composition, the rule of thirds.

“While viewing any scenic photograph that contains a horizon (horizon – a line where the sky seems to meet the earth) you will notice that the horizon is normally positioned one-third from the bottom or one-third from the top, but rarely dead center in the photo. The basic “rule of thirds” simply divides aphotograph in thirds, both vertically and horizontally, to produce photos that seem naturally pleasing to the human eye.

Take an old 4 x 6-inch photo and draw a line every 2 inches across the width of the photo. Then draw a line every 1-5/16 of an inch across the length of thephoto. You should end up with a total four lines that divide the photo in thirds,both vertically and horizontally. Now, look again at the calendar to see whatdifferent objects (horizon, streams, streets, trees and tree-lines) are used to match that same pattern of lines or thirds. It doesn’t matter whether thecamera is held in the horizontal or vertical position, the rule still applies.

So before you fire the shutter button on your next photo, move the camera position around for a few seconds while looking through the viewfinder, and you just might discover that great photographs usually don’t happen by accident.

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