Right brain, left brain myth debunked

[Alan Klein]

I use balance a lot in my photos almost to the point of obsessiveness.  It probably gives me a lot of static pictures but I can't seem to get out of the habit.  It just looks right to my eye.  What often happens is that when I balance the composition that has multiple items, things just seem to fall into places where thirds would be or certainly not centered.  Roughly, anyway. 

[Ray]

Where would we be without rules! Rules dominate our lives. Think about it. Every aspect of most of our activities tends to conform to rules. We have rules of etiquette, dress, and behaviour towards each other, whether religious, traditional or legal. Rules of grammar when we speak or write our language. Rules for driving a car, with numerous speed limits that vary along the roads. Rules for playing every type of game, such as cricket and football, chess or cards. Rules for eating, for example, breakfast, lunch and dinner in that order.

Then we have huge sets of complex rules dealing with commerce, taxation, insurance and health. We also have a huge industry of workers who job it is to create, amend and monitor rules, and another huge industry, the police and legal system, which spends huge sums of money to determine who has broken the rules and what their punishment should be.

And I haven't even mentioned the rules (or laws) of science. Crikey! It's enough to drive any sane person into the production of art, free of all rules. 

[Isaac]

"Every composition is unique, and following some concocted formula will not guarantee a good photograph. There are no formulas; there are no rules of composition. I strongly urge all photographers, beginning or experienced, to avoid any instruction that claims there are -- it's bogus."

The Essence of Photography: Seeing and Creativity, Bruce Barnbaum

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Isaac, you can give any meaning you want, prove anything you want, when you take a single sentence out of context. Especially if that sentence is a very general, blanket statement. And parsing the vast universe of quotes that are available today to us on the Internet, one can always find one to match whatever one wants to prove. Not to mention that the author of a single quote, like the one you quoted above might have had something else in mind and simply did not express himself clearly enough. Reading the whole page, surrounding the above quote, one gets a distinctly different impression than what the quoted sentence appears to say.

[Alan Klein]

If you read Birbaum you'll see that although he says do not follow rules, his book is full of concepts and how they work in a photo.   (Why else would he write a book if there are no theories about good photography?  He'd have nothing to say.) His point about rules is that you cannot follow a specific list of rules to get a good picture for a specific scene.  You have to look at it to see what works and apply concepts that work with that view.  Each view is different so you can't apply a set list of rules.  You're not using a recipe to cook a picture.  But you can pull concepts out of you head that may help you.

[BJL]

Isaac, you can give any meaning you want, prove anything you want, when you take a single sentence out of context. ...

Slobodan,
    I am not sure what position you are advocating here beyond a generic "I disagree with Isaac".  On the subject of the myth of an esthetic preference for Golden Ratio shapes for photographs, paintings, drawings and such, can you point us to some source of evidence?  And not just for the vague idea of "not too square, not too long and thin", but evidence of a tendency towards that 1.618 shape over the familiar range from 1.25 to 1.5, where 5:4, 4:3, 7:5 and 3:2 all lie and for which I mention some evidence above?

[Isaac]

Isaac, you can give any meaning you want, prove anything you want, when you take a single sentence out of context. Especially if that sentence is a very general, blanket statement. And parsing the vast universe of quotes that are available today to us on the Internet, one can always find one to match whatever one wants to prove. Not to mention that the author of a single quote, like the one you quoted above might have had something else in mind and simply did not express himself clearly enough. Reading the whole page, surrounding the above quote, one gets a distinctly different impression than what the quoted sentence appears to say.

Slobodan, you can make a very general blanket statement -  "you can give any meaning you want, prove anything you want, when you take a single sentence out of context. … And parsing the vast universe of quotes that are available today to us on the Internet, one can always find one to match whatever one wants to prove" - even though that is not a true description of the particular circumstances. Not to mention that the author expresses himself exceptionally clearly, and expresses the same sentiment repeatedly.

Reading the whole book (as I've done) and reading his previous book (as I've done), one does get a very clear impression of what the author wishes to say --

"Rules are foolish, arbitrary, mindless things that raise you quickly to a level of acceptable mediocrity, then prevent you from progressing further. Several of the most well-known rules - the rule of thirds, the rule of avoiding a horizon in the center of an image, the rule of having an image read from left to right, the rule of not placing the center of interest in the center of the image, and so many others - are undesirable constraints with no validity."    [My emphasis.]

The Art of Photography: An Approach to Personal Expression, Bruce Barnbaum

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Slobodan,
    I am not sure what position you are advocating here beyond a generic "I disagree with Isaac"...

I have no reason to disagree with Isaac as a matter of generic policy. I do not have anything against Isaac. I do, however, often disagree with some of the quotes he posts. I do not think that even he agrees with every quote he posts. I like to believe he posts certain quotes as a contribution to the discussion, an attempt to illuminate it from different angles, rather than as a reflection of his propensity for argumentativeness.

... On the subject of the myth of an esthetic preference for Golden Ratio shapes for photographs, paintings, drawings and such, can you point us to some source of evidence? ...

Frankly, I have no idea how this discussion about rules that guide composition inside a frame ended up about outside dimensions of the frame!? In all my readings and experience I never encountered anything that dictates outside dimensions. I always thought that those dimensions are set for reasons of industrial design or other unrelated matters, historical, etc., and not artistic preferences. Leica format (24x36 mm) derived from 35 mm cine film at the time. And that cine film derived by halving Kodak's 70mm cine film. There must be some other, perhaps quite banal, reason for such a plethora of "standard" framing sizes that are often quite a mismatch to original film/sensor proportions. Or A4 vs. US letter size. And to be clear, I have zero interest in discussing outside dimensions of anything from a compositional standpoint. I simply take them as given and work with what I got.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Reading the whole book (as I've done) and reading his previous book (as I've done)...

Congrats on being such a great bookworm. And while you are reading about photography, I am photographing, using a bunch of those ah-so-nonsensical rules.

P.S. Sorry, couldn't resist a dig that has become a staple of many posters against you on this forum 

[Isaac]

Congrats on being such a great bookworm. And while you are reading about photography, I am photographing, using a bunch of those ah-so-nonsensical rules.

P.S. Sorry, couldn't resist a dig that has become a staple of many posters against you on this forum  

You're in a hole and still digging.

"The intention of the perpetrator of this fallacy is to divert an audience's attention from the argument, usually because the perpetrator is getting the worst of it."

As it happens, I'll be spending the next 5 days in the mountains around Lake Tahoe: photographing.

Have fun with your rules :-)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... As it happens, I'll be spending the next 5 days in the mountains around Lake Tahoe: photographing.

Have fun with your rules :-)

Can't wait to see the result of your photographing without rules... Oh, wait, we won't! Maybe for the better? 

[amolitor]

I'm a little baffled by the apparent difficulty with imagining a practical middle ground between slavish adherence to the handful of rules photographers love to cite, and some imaginary territory in which all bets are off, and we, I don't know, simply hurl our cameras into the air with the motor drive clashing wildly?

I work in a zone somewhere between these two extremes. I assure you that the territory exists.

[Isaac]

Bruce Barnbaum seems fond of Edward Weston's rule-less notion "Good composition is only the strongest way of seeing the subject".

"Now to consult rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk." :-)

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I'm a little baffled by the apparent difficulty with imagining a practical middle ground between slavish adherence to the handful of rules...

Only if you assume I've been advocating such slavish adherence

[amolitor]

Your position is remarkably unclear, Slobodan. You appear to be disagreeing with someone or something and I honestly cannot make out what o who.

Which, due to natural human impulse, however irrational, makes me suspect that it's me.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

..."Now to consult rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk." :-)

Battle of quotes:

Miles Davis (paraphrasing): "First you learn everything there is to learn about jazz. Then you forget it all and play until your head spins."

If you insist on that gravitation metaphor, then the this follows: the rules of compositions exist wether you consult them or not, just like the law of gravitation exist whether we are aware of that or not.

The way we "consult" rules of composition however is much closer to Miles Davis' quote: we learn about them over time, either by actively studying them or by absorbing works of art around us. All that accumulated knowledge and influences, conscious or not, as well as natural predisposition, is combined in each of us slightly differently. That is why we can "forget" (in Miles Davis' sense) about the rules of composition (or not consult them) when we press the shutter.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Your position is remarkably unclear, Slobodan. You appear to be disagreeing with someone or something and I honestly cannot make out what o who.

Which, due to natural human impulse, however irrational, makes me suspect that it's me.

My position is absolutely in agreement with your latest post (#92).

I did disagree with you earlier in the thread when you seem to be advocating (or agreeing with) the notion that rules are nonsense, creating the impression that you are leaning toward "some imaginary territory in which all bets are off."

[Alan Klein]

Battle of quotes:

Miles Davis (paraphrasing): "First you learn everything there is to learn about jazz. Then you forget it all and play until your head spins."

If you insist on that gravitation metaphor, then the this follows: the rules of compositions exist wether you consult them or not, just like the law of gravitation exist whether we are aware of that or not.

The way we "consult" rules of composition however is much closer to Miles Davis' quote: we learn about them over time, either by actively studying them or by absorbing works of art around us. All that accumulated knowledge and influences, conscious or not, as well as natural predisposition, is combined in each of us slightly differently. That is why we can "forget" (in Miles Davis' sense) about the rules of composition (or not consult them) when we press the shutter.

+1 If you allow your head to compose a picture that is most pleasing to your eye and brain, you will be subconsciously following the rules. 

[stamper]

+1 If you allow your head to compose a picture that is most pleasing to your eye and brain, you will be subconsciously following the rules. 

I was about to post something in a similar vein but Alan beat me to it and probably stated it better than I could. To sum up, using rules puts your photographic thoughts into a straightjacket.

[BJL]

Frankly, I have no idea how this discussion about rules that guide composition inside a frame ended up about outside dimensions of the frame!? In all my readings and experience I never encountered anything that dictates outside dimensions. I always thought that those dimensions are set for reasons of industrial design or other unrelated matters, historical, etc., and not artistic preferences. Leica format (24x36 mm) derived from 35 mm cine film at the time. And that cine film derived by halving Kodak's 70mm cine film. There must be some other, perhaps quite banal, reason for such a plethora of "standard" framing sizes that are often quite a mismatch to original film/sensor proportions. Or A4 vs. US letter size.

We seem to be in agreement on image shape then -- but dare I suggest that choosing what part of the scene is in an image is part of the decision about composition, and so the print shape is part of that compositional decision?  (I am not talk about "subject framing", not physical picture frames!)

By the way, the mismatch between standard larger-than-snapshot print shapes (like 10x8, 14x11, 20x16) and the currently dominant film and sensor shapes (1:1, 4:3 and 3:2) might be traced back to the common shapes of large format plates and film sheets, combined with "inertia" in the design of printing paper and picture frames.  For some decades, most 36x24mm snapshot prints in English speaking countries were 5"x4" or 5"x3 1/2": the 3:2 print shapes like 6"x4" and 12"x8" arrived far later!  (Some European countries instead had centimeter-based" common print sizes, but the ones I know of were 4:3 shapes, not 3:2.)