Sometimes, I like to venture over to our local marina and imagine I am one of them – a boat owner – the “people of the boats” I like to call them. I envision climbing on board one of the welcoming vessels and heading out to sea navigating to an island paradise. Or, perhaps, cruising down the coast to another town, anchoring in its harbor and spending the day exploring. Each one of those boats possesses  the potential for adventure. What a way to travel! But alas, eventually reality sets in. I am not a person of the boats. I get seasick for one thing and the sight of the boats being scraped of barnacles or painted, varnished and having general upkeep performed on them reminds me of this. It’s still fun to daydream though and recently I slipped in to the harbor with the idea of composition, specifically the rule of thirds, in mind.

The purpose of the rule is to help with composing  interesting and compelling photos. It involves mentally dividing your viewfinder or photo into a grid with two vertical  and two horizontal lines which are crisscrossed to make a 3X3 grid, like a tic-tac-toe game. The idea is to place the parts of the photo you want to be the points of interest near the intersecting points of the grid.

When photographing a landscape, it is much more compelling, generally, if the horizon is not in the middle of the picture but aligned with one of the lines of thirds.

By placing the horizon line in either the top or bottom third, the emphasis will be on either the sky or the water or land.

Some movement in the water caught my eye and I discovered there were a number of round rays swimming amongst the rocks.

Then, as I was getting ready to leave the harbor, a heron flew across the horizon. It can be difficult to capture moving subjects in one of those grid intersections. Re-composing via cropping can be done in photoshop later. You don’t want to rely on that all the time but it can help occasionally. Also, there is a grid you can use in photoshop in case you are having trouble visualizing the grid in your mind.

I believe we shouldn’t be too restricted by rules in our creative endeavors, so keep it in mind and experiment with the rule thirds when composing if you haven’t yet, but if you like your horizon lines in the middle of your photos, go for it.

Cheers,

~ Susan