I Only Have Eyes for YouPosted by drfl on May 14th, 2009

Breaking the photographic rule of thirds, I blatently centered this guy who was barely poking his head out of the water.  Normally, I would put him somewhere just to the right or left of here to follow the “Golden Ratio”, but in this case, I felt center was better.  To give a little background of the “Golden Ratio” or “Rule of Thirds”, here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia that sums it up:

The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in visual arts such as painting, photography and design. The rule states that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would.

Basically, asthetics have has been studied back to ancient Greek times and it was determined back then that placing the subject on these points will create a more dramatic image.  Of course, I normally follow this rule, more or less, but there are times when rules are to be broken and I felt this is one such example.  Of course, if I were to dig a little deeper into this simple photograph, I might realize that the frogs left eye (or the eye on the right for the viewer) is actually the primary subject and is situated at approximately a third over from the right.  If this is the case, then I have actually followed the rule.  To me, this maybe a bit of overanalyzation and at any rate, I believe the image really works because of its simplicity.

Technical Details:
Canon 50d, 300 f/4l + 1.4tc, f/6.3, 1/320 sec.
DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, Nebraska