People Who “Don’t Want to be Restricted By The Rules of Photography” Don’t Understand Them

Recognizing a pattern yet? Yea, I’m feeling a bit punchy lately and I figured after my post about natural light vs flash photographers, I’d follow it up with something similar…

A good friend of mine when he was starting to learn about photography spoke about this when I mentioned the rule of thirds at one point. “Rules are made to be broken, Alan” he said, “how can you get anywhere when you stay in some predefined box”. He may have been more or less elegant of course.

• Yes, rules are made to be broken.
• Yes, the “rules” of photography seem fairly arbitrary.
• Yes, great photographers and great photographs break the moulds.

But you have to know the rules before you can break them, and I think that knowing why the rules are there is a requirement before you can break them.

The rule of thirds wasn’t created by some photographers guild back in the 1800s to create an artificial barrier for new shooters to enter, it’s something noticed from the origin of art that images where the subjects are in the thirds lines make the image more interesting. Why? Something about human psychology, maybe the way our lizard brains work. Who knows. But before you go off and stick your subject dead centre know why you’re doing it, and do it with intention, not because you need a quick answer for the photo-geek next to you muttering about how you should have shot with the subject a bit off center.  You can absolutely take an image with the subject dead center, over-exposed, under-exposed, but if you’re trying to be better at your craft know why you’re doing it.

Below is an example of a classically “correct” image (Dawn over Turimetta By Crouchy69 on Flickr).  Note the foreground has a subject to draw the eye in, the horizon is offcenter, the sun isn’t dead above so there are shadows and great contrast all around, and there are recognizable figures (the people) to lend some scale.

Now lets look at the opposite.  This is titled “My Slipper” by yours truely (though it could be part of any of a thousand different instagram feeds).  Note the lack of any care put into it, no staging other than placing the slipper on the floor, no attempt at lighting, that the subject is dead center with full depth of field and a metric crap-tonne (that’s the techical term) of filters applied.

I did the above to prove a point of course, and maybe you’ll cry that the artist of “My Slipper” was making a point by not lighting it and the reason for the framing was to rally against the oppression of the system.  End result is I’m sorry but it’s just not as good an image.

The last example is another one from flickr, simply “flowers” by saxyman0:

Centered? Yup.  Against “the rules”?  Yup.  Does it work because the photographer did it with intention and knows that one case where a subject does look good centered is when it’s circular like that of a flower shot head on?  Yup.

It’s the vibe of proud ignorance I think that gets me.  The impression that they are so good they can skip over knowing the basics and go straight to breaking the rules.  Now I know you’d never do something like that, it’s the other people.  The ones who don’t know about exposure compensation and say that their horribly backlit picture of a black blob that is probably a person is “artsy” and “breaking the rules”.  Maybe some of the rules are there for a good reason and we should spend a bit more time studying to see what “the rules” are before we are so quick to break them.