Quick Tips: Using the rule of thirds Video

Quick Tips: Using the rule of thirds Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:02

>> I'm Brian Cooley with the Quick Tip on taking better pictures with your digital camera using the rule of thirds. This is an old artists technique from way back that allows you to get away from the all too frequent symmetry of centering everything up when you take a picture. That's frankly usually a boring way to do things and it doesn't really tell a story that well. Instead, think of your photo like this. There's your over all view and then divide that in thirds, two lines across, and two lines up and down. Where the lines intercept, these four places are great areas to put the main subject. Let's take a look how it works in practice. Catherine is sitting here in front of a wall of bamboo, and if I took a standard composition, I would center her up in the shot, take the picture like so, and it's fine. It's a serviceable photo, but it's not great. What if I do this? I put her on the left third line and a little bit down to the corner, so it's a little bit on that node in the lower left that I showed you. Now I take the same shot, and it's more interesting to my eye. Now I can tell she is seated along a really interesting long depth of bamboo on this long running cement seated area. It tells a little bit of a story. Another way to use the rule of thirds is when you're taking a picture of the horizon or a landscape or a cityscape. Instead of putting the horizon or the main line right across the middle, consider lining it up with the bottom or even the top third line horizontally. Same thing goes for the verticals if you're taking a picture of anything vertical, whether it's a building, the side of a wall, what have you, use these grid-lines and their intersections as places to put things and you'll get much more interesting photos that lead the viewer through a little visual story. So, do better than the average snapshot. Do your composition using the rule of thirds. ^M00:01:49 [ Music ]