Photography Tips for Kids: The Rule of Thirds

 

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Photography Tips Rule of Thirds

We’ve talked about finding good lighting and an interesting perspective for your photographs, but there’s another important thing to consider:  The Rule of Thirds.

This might sound complicated, but it really isn’t.

Imagine that your photograph is divided into three pieces, going side to side, and then you divided it again going up and down.  You’d get something that looks roughly like this:

Rule of Thirds 1

If this is your picture area, most of us plan to put the most important part of the picture in the middle – in the yellow box.  We arrange our shot so that the thing we want people to look at is centered – but you know what?  Our eyes naturally look off-center. 

That means that we will automatically look at whatever is left of, right of, above or below the very middle.

Rule of Thirds 2

So instead of planning to put that beautiful flower right in the middle of your picture, consider putting it where one of the white stars or yellow lines are.  Those are places where our eyes go first naturally.

What does this mean, really?

Put the subject of your picture beside the middle.

I played around with some leaves.  Does the Rule of Thirds and a change in perspective make these any more interesting? 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Which ones do you like?

What are your thoughts?

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