The Rule of Thirds? I guess I just plain forgot!!
At the beginning Friday of my four-week class I teach online with the
BPSOP, and the first day of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the plane, I introduce what I call my “Personal Pearls of Wisdoms”.
These are sayings I’ve created during my fifty-three-year career as a corporate and advertising photographer, and my thirty-plus years teaching and giving seminars at photo events. In my ever expanding list of these ‘Pearls’, none will ever match up to one of my all-time favorites:
“GOOD PHOTOGRAPHERS FOLLOW THE RULES, GREAT PHOTOGRAPHERS BREAK THE RULES”.
I wrote this a very long time ago, and it has been my mantra ever since. I’ve been living by this creed (if you will) for as long as I’ve been taking pictures, the latest count is forty-eight years going on forty-nine.
I had a student tell me that the president of her camera club once told her to never shoot into the sun. I love shooting into the sun!
Others have been scolded by senior members of camera clubs for not following the Rule of Thirds (see the above photo). Whatever you do, don’t follow people because your friends told you to or the guy behind the counter at your local camera store said so, or those newly appointed officers at your camera club…they are usually the worst!!!
Ansel Adams once said, “There are no rules for good pictures, just good pictures”.
BTW, I was rummaging through the stuff at the back of an old antique store when I found this amazing quote written on a plain piece of wood…which I now have on the wall in my studio. It says, “Color outside the lines”.
So, I ask you; where do YOU want to fit into the ‘cosmic photographic scheme of things?
Stay tuned for more discussions on forgettable rules!!
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and www.instagram.com/barabanjoe. Check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
JoeB
