East Of The Rule Of Third

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The Supper at Emmaus, Han van Meegeren 1936-1937

Here is one guy, who really hates his rule of thirds: He has a point, though. It’s often very hard to understand that from the rich canon of composition that we have amassed over several thousand years of producing art, the rule of thirds is the one thing that has made it into photography education. The rest is mostly left to feeling: You slowly, very slowly get a vague sense of composition and design when you talk to photographers that look at your work its flaws: “You let the viewer escape” (pointing to brighter spots near the edge of the picture.), “This lacks density”, “there is too much going on here” and so on. Photographic experience is – apart from some technical aspects – mostly that: A subconscious knowledge you have amassed over time what makes a picture tick.

And you either have a natural knack for that, you patiently wait until this form of knowledge miraculously emerges, or you just look into art theory and -history and try to derive some simple facts from how people have been drawing and painting for centuries:

…and then go on from there and look endlessly at paintings by Vermeer(or as in this case: pictures wrongly attributed to him).

 

 

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