I attend a local camera group called Focus on Photography and in our recent catch up, we discussed cropping and composition techniques.
For some time, I’ve known about the Rule of Thirds when composing a shot. I seem to have it in mind when taking a landscape shot, particularly at the coast. It just feels like a naturally pleasing composition. For example, 1 third sky, 1 third sea or 1 third sand and usually a bit of interest where a third interection meets.
In my Canon 750D, if I go to Menu – Grid Display, I can select a grid that puts the Rule of Thirds grid on my image when in live view. I must admit, I don’t really use this grid on camera as I find I can easily visualise thirds myself when composing a photo. However, it might be a handy starting point while you’re getting the hang on things.
One composition grid I didn’t know about was the Golden Ratio. It takes advantage of the Fibonacci curve that is often on display in Mother Nature. Think Snail shell (also Google it and you’ll be amazed)! What it does is breaks the photo composition up into a curve (see the images below), with various points of interest along the curve to draw your attention. I have since discovered that using the Crop Overlay function in my rather old copy of Photoshop Elements 10, I can now overlay a Golden Ratio curve onto my photos.
So I decided to have a little practise with cropping using the newly discovered overlay grids. In the gallery below I’ve included 3 images. 1 shows the original, uncropped image. The next shows the image cropped using the Golden Ratio overlay – where I tried to position the head of the lady in silouhette in the centre of the curve. The final image shows the image cropped using the rule of thirds, where I tried to get the lady’s body on a third intersection.
Do you see any difference? It’s all rather subtle isn’t it? Let me know if there’s an image you prefer.