The rule of thirds is wrong. Teaching it to photographers as the main compositional tool is as absurd as teaching a lighting lesson based on the use of one on camera flash bounced, and calling it ‘the rule of lighting’. There is no ‘rule of lighting’ because there are no rules about how you must light a photograph, there is nothing saying use of a flash will always make your picture better, and finally there are so many other techniques and styles of lighting to consider which will look the best for your vision.

There are two major issues that I have with the Rule of Thirds; first calling it a rule as well as presenting it as a rule, and second, the shortcoming of compositional value it represents by itself without further understanding.
Composition is more influenced by the point from which you shoot from than where you point the camera. Just standing in one place and expecting to create a beautiful composition by panning and zooming a camera will almost never help you achieve a great composition. Instead of just standing in one place, applying the Rule of thirds (aka the Rule) to take a picture photographers use a huge variety of techniques to create masterful compositions. They move up down, left, right, closer, further, change focal length for depth and compression, to reveal and hide parts of the picture and arrange elements in the frame. Playing with contrast of colour, tone, texture and sharpness, using the lines in an image to guide the eye around the frame as well as the physical or implied motion of objects and shapes, and finally; understanding golden golden ratio, The Rule falls so short of teaching or even suggesting that those techniques should be learned and explored.
Rules. Who really enjoys rules when creating anything? A restriction on what you aren’t aloud to do? Photographers love to throw around the term ‘creative’, but what’s creative about being told there is a compositional rule to adhere to when shooting? I’m sure the majority of experienced photographers understand that the Rule isn’t really a rule. It is a suggestion or concept, but to new photographers the mislabeled concept has great potential to be a stumbling block as they learn. But even photogs who have been shooting for years have images which display a very shallow understanding of composition based largely on the Rule

Are you starting to see why the Rule is such an injustice to the skill of great composition? But if it’s so wrong why would anyone have made the Rule or used it? The Rule comes from simplifying a deeper understanding of two big compositional concepts: the golden ratio and the ability of the photographer to guide the eye of the viewer around a picture.
First the golden ratio. The golden ratio is a mathematical concept that has very useful aesthetic implications (if you don’t know about the golden ratio Wikipedia will do a great job of bringing you up to speed). The placement of subjects, by use of the golden ratio can make a composition of a simple subject more interesting when compared with a centered subject.
And second, the way an eye moves around a photo. If the composition of a photo makes the eye of the viewer look around the image the viewer’s eye will be continually exploring the shot, picking up details. The movement around images pleases the eye, and keeps the eye looking at a photograph for a longer amount of time without getting bored, or moving to the next image. Both big bonuses. Using the lines in the image, direction of motion, patterns and ‘pointing’ objects, the photographer can control the way the eye moves around the picture, highlighting details and in general making a more interesting photograph. Movement connects to the Rule because the thirds are optimal locations for subject matter to promote eye movement. Centered subject matter has a low possibility of promoting eye movement images. While subjects close to the edges of the frame often lead the eye outside of the frame onto a different image or it will make a sense of uncomfortable tension which cause the viewer to reject the image. Photos with objects placed around the areas of thirds are likely to promote eye movement to see what else is on other parts of the frame, while allowing space to move without leaving the picture.
The Error of Thirds: shooting using thirds without neither thought nor care for a plethora of other compositional techniques one should always be considering when composing. Often the error of thirds will be blatant use of the Rule while the rest of the frame’s content isn’t helping or useful for the subject placed carelessly on the cross hairs of the tic tac toe grid. The concepts of Thirds is not wrong; many amazing photographs use thirds to aid the composition, however without consideration to other techniques the Rule will not salvage a poor composition.
The Rule should never be taught as the first or largest step of understanding or learning composition, especially at an elementary, level. Instead composition should be taught with the Rule being one unit of a larger curriculum, with more emphasis placed on a broad understanding of a variety of compositional techniques and photographing with conscious in respect to the location, interaction, and connotations carried by all visual elements.

I will leave you with a list of compositional techniques to research and explore with equal emphasis as given to thirds.
Lines
Positive/Negative space and Isolation
Contrast (tonal, texture, colour)
Movement: literal, implied, and ‘pointing’ objects.
Thirds

Why did I shoot the pictures with the composition I did? See examples of non-Rule shots? Do you think they work? What about shots that use thirds; see more compositional techniques used with Thirds?

I am excited hear your thoughts on this, and even more excited to see if there is an effect on the compositional skill and consciousness of readers of my blog. Leave a comment, if you shoot in the future and these ideas come to mind and affect the way you capture I encourage you to share it with us below in the comments.

Why take pictures of other people and have to deal with egos, conflicting opinions, schedules and every other unforeseen bump in the road when you can just go take pictures of yourself? Think about how peaceful it will be; no riders complaining about you wanting them to ride it again, if the frame didn’t work and you want to get it there is no one to convince. No texting storm 3 hours before the shoot to clarify location, time, clothing…

Without the sarcasm loaded on like my desert plate at a chinese buffet, I do actually enjoy shooting and collaborating with riders, but shooting self portraits is also great and difficult for different reasons. For example; shooting with other riders they don’t make stupid faces as they ride (at least not as much), other riders can offer rider’s perspective on the shot; what they feel is working or isn’t. However self portrait shooting does offer some really awesome advantages too; out in the woods(heck yes!), riding my bike (heck yes!), taking pictures (heck yes!), beautiful(heck yes!) peaceful(heck yes!)…. autumn(heck yes!) etc. I felt a lot more connected to the passion behind riding bikes that makes me get out and ride and take pictures. The other thing with self portraits; if you really want to make a shot happen but its a difficult shot to get the rider is patient as long as you are!

As you can imaging shooting self portraits can become very tasking mentally and physically. You are the art director, the photographer, the technician, the sherpa, the subject, the critic etc. Instead of being just some of these contributing factors you are all of them, yeah.. woah. All of these shots are from one week where I did four shoots (one with riders not shown) and worked full time hours on the side. Two of the shoots were sunrise, two of them sunset (the last two back to back sleep-work-sunset-sleep-sunrise-work-sleep).

Some of these shots were taken using the DIY PW-Push Button Trigger which was just recently featured by the website: DIY Photography. While others were shot using my camera’s intervalometer (PWs are awesome but do have limitations on cold mornings over long distances strapped to bike frames (metal is to a PW as Kryptonite is to _______).

I would love to hear from more of my readers to get to know you guys, and am going to try to add a question to each post.
So..
Have you had a (mis)adventure similar to a subject/story i’ve written about? (Extra points if it was inspired by this blog)

Funny I write this as snow is falling outside my window, slowly collecting on the ground. As much as I love snow and wish winter was a year round season my subconscious seems to be yelling at me; ‘you idiot this winter crap goes against every evolutionary instinct of survival! its cold, food can’t grow, skin can grow pasty from lack of vitamin D…’
When you are out with friends, doing the sports and activities you love, enjoying nature, its all great. But I will admit that summer an wakesports does have a leg up in one respect; the heat.

Maybe i’ll have to move to the French Rivera where you could wake up in the mountains, lay fresh tracks in the snow, drive two or three hours and lay on the beaches in Nice.. but thats a budget and language away at this point.

I got to spend time on lake Shawnigan 3 times, each was a great time and a big learning curve for me to shoot. Any photographer would agree that shooting a sport or genre of photography that you don’t participate in is very difficult to do well. Wake sports are pretty new to me, so shooting it was probably one of the biggest genre challenges i have faced recently in photography.

I really hope my knee is in better shape next time I get in a boat. It has been a bit too ruined to ride, or risk re-injury. Although i still can’t complain, just riding along, and enjoying lake is great.

Ps. I really want to learn how to wakesurf