Photo Challenge: Rule of Thirds

This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is the Rule of Thirds.  I admit I am not usually one that follows the rule of thirds, then again maybe that is the amateur in much rushing to the surface.  To jump to this weeks picture CLICK HERE.

What is the rule of thirds for those that are still going, hmmm ….

Darren Rowse of the Digital Photography School has a great visual description of the rule of thirds, however, in brief, Darren describes the rules as “The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts.  The theory is that if you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo becomes more balanced and will enable a viewer of the image to interact with it more naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people’s eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the centre of the shot – using the rule of thirds works with this natural way of viewing an image rather than working against it.”

Below are a series of three pictures as I played around with this weeks assignment on the rule of thirds.

The Original Photo

This picture was taken from the bank of the pond pushing the limits of my 300 mm lens.  This is a raw of a photo as they come.

My Final Edits

The second was my original published photo (as you can see, I originally ignored the rule and placed the most important point of interest (the White-Tailed Deer) dead centre in the photo.

Considering the Rule of Thirds

My final image is an attempt to recompose the picture to capture the rule of thirds from this weeks assignment.

Which works better – which doesn’t?