Snapshotting in Thirds
One of the nice things about photography is that any amateur photographer can instantly improve the quality of their photos by following the “rule of thirds”. It’s like magic, as photographs can go from stale to lively just by moving the subject away from the center. It’s rather counter-intuitive to think about: How does moving the center of attention away from the center improve the photo? And yet it does. Magic.
Simply imagining a grid isn’t going to turn a snapshot into a work of art, but it’s a good start. It works out very well when it’s plain and clear specifically what’s being lined up on the grid. (It might hope out extra to have a camera which shows the grid on the display screen, but alas my camera has no feature.)
Back before photography became a hobby for me, if I were going to photograph something, I’d place it in the center of the image, as seen with Sasha above. There’s no problem with the photo, right? Actually, to be honest, I kind of like it.
Reworking the scene to put Sasha between the middle and right thirds of the image has failed to impress me. Maybe it’s because Sasha looks less like she’s standing on the pathway, and more in the plants?
I decided to try a change of background, and this vastly improved the image. If it weren’t for the reflections of the sunlight, this might almost be a decent snapshot.
Unfortunately, that’s all I see in these photos, is snapshots. Never mind that there was little composition put into them, and that I only took one photo of each scene. I’m left asking myself, “What could I have improved when taking a photo? Could post-processing in Gimp have improved the look of the photo? Can playing with levels and saturation alone transform a snapshot into something ‘Wow’?”
In these images, there’s a visible lack of composition. There’s no connection between the subject (Sasha) and her surroundings. Maybe that’s the first thing I need to address.