Rules? I Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules

Unknown flower, Peavine Trail, Prescott Area, AZ

But I do and I want them.  Rules improve my art. 
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My mother came to visit me in my new home in late August 2017.  And what do you do with visitors when they come to visit you in Arizona and you live only 2.5 hours away?  You visit the Grand Canyon—one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World!  So, she and I went—twice.  We ditched my husband the second time who believes if you’ve seen an amazing crack in the ground once, you’ve seen it enough.  Though, he does want to take the two-week rafting tour down the Colorado River.  I think it sounds wet, maybe even cold, but fun.   
 
Now, my mom has been using her mobile phone camera to advantage since she and a longtime family friend took a month-long southwest United States driving tour together a few years earlier.  She had purchased gizmos (that we will discuss in another post) to make her mobile phone an amazing tool for great photography.  And she learned something spectacular on that trip that she imparted to me at the Grand Canyon... ​

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 … the Rule of Three.  There are other rules: rule of twos, golden ratio rule, etc.  But this one rule will transform any photo without doing anything else fancy with the phone settings.  This is true for any camera. 

The idea is to break the screen up into three columns that are cross-sectioned with three rows.   You will end up with 9 boxes on your screen.  This works whether the picture ratio is 16:9 or 4:5 or 2:3.  Any ratio setting will work.  You will find this option on most modern mobile phones.  On my Samsung S7, the setting is found under the gear in the upper right-hand corner (when the camera is in portrait mode; left corner when in landscape mode) of the camera screen, then scroll down to “grid lines.”  The choices are “3x3” or “square.”  We want “3x3.” 

How does this help?  It creates interest in a photo.  It can create a mood.  Below are three pics I took this morning.  The first shows our birdie friend in the obvious-traditional method we all learn: smack dab in the middle.  

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For me, while I like this bird figurine a lot, it doesn’t necessarily qualify for front and center on its own.  However, if I move the camera to the right, placing my bird on the left third of the screen, I now have a story.  Where did the bird come from?  Is he actually looking at me?  For me?  

And if I wanted to create a totally different mood, I could move my camera to the left and place the bird in the right third of the screen.  Now he feels crowded, agitated, like he has nowhere to go.  It doesn’t matter that he might actually have a whole mantle to traverse off camera; on camera he has no room to move.  

The latter picture tells a different story than the second.  And both feel more dynamic than the first. ​​​​

We can also align the subject within any of the three horizontal thirds as well.  

Top third of screen; snail on sidwalk, Prescott, AZ

Middle third of screen; snail on sidewalk, Prescott, AZ

Bottom third (ish) of screen; snail on sidewalk, Prescott, AZ

We can get even more artistic!
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We can center our subject over the cross-hairs that are created where the corner boxes meet the center box.  If we want focus to center on the eyes, like in the pup picture below, we place any of the cross-hairs on the eyes.

I can't wait to see your art!