rule breaking :)

elven

What's your favourite (photography) rule to break?
Thirds?
Focus?
Straight horizon?
Getting down to their level when photographing children?
Not putting the subject bang in the middle of the frame?
Keep detail in your shadows/highlights?
Avoid harsh shadows & shooting at noon?

Sometimes I wish I could abandon focus altogether, when I get some particularly lovely bokeh. But I'm having to work on not putting everything on a third, in every single shot. It's an affliction.

Keep it clean now... :rolleyes:

RCNPhotos

I don't break them intentionally (I'd need to know em first haha), but I try and stay away from centre shots, I prefer left and right lead in's, something drilled into me by a tutor on my portfolio course. I only really use centre stuff for music work and even then often try to get left and right lead ins.

Borderfox

I always break the thirds rule when shooting sport, especially when using a centre point for focus.

GristlyEnd

I don't intentionally 'break' the rule but then there isn't someone popping up on my shoulder telling me to watch those thirds. To be honest it irritates me when I see it in C&C.

Shooting at noon creates some great shadows, so another 100 lines for me.

440Hz

Hmmmm very interesting thread elven! I'm not sure what rules I keep to, or which ones I break, I try not to think about it too much, but now that you ask... I hate keeping my subject in the centre of the frame, off center (when it looks right of course), and conservative use of negative space where applicable. Nothing worse than centered shot after centered shot to make things look cliched and boring, IMHO. Personal preference of couse, as always.

Roen

Unintentionally every single shot I take is off by a few degrees sloping down to the left. My life style choice of using my head as a brake pad has ensured that what I see and what actually is are two different things

Sebzy

Rules what rules break them all.
Get your camera out and have fun the rules only get in the way.


Feckin rules

thebaz

i agree with you Julie about the focus rule -- if an unknown displays an out of focus shot , it gets lambasted as beginner stuff , but if its Cartier its art -- and i love london calling shot -- i like some of my out of focus stuff too

thirds and not putting subject central kind of contradict , my worst habit is shooting straight

harsh noon light , i avoid

Oriel

Shouldn't we make room for thebaz here?
Kidding, KIDDING! Seriously, kidding.
I always do the horizon thing. No matter how straight I think it is, it ain't.

/edit - spending too much money...

thebaz

snap

pete4130

There are rules in photography? :eek:

ThOnda

What rules? :-)

I break the rule of correct exposure. Most of the time I leave it completely in hands of my camera, because there's no time to think. But I try to be ready with manual exposure or EV corrections.

Mellor

Crooked horizon, not slightly mind,
when its intentionally off by 15-30 deg, when the subject is unrelared to it,
is that breaking??

elven

It's quite funny - a few people have said that they avoid the rule of putting the subject centre frame (I think that's what they are saying anyway) - but I meant actually centre-ing it, to break the rule that says you shouldn't...

If you do a search on photography tips then you're bound to find a list of 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts' (with some lame disclaimer about being individual), I just wondered how much that stuff had maybe filtered into our subconscious. I thought it might be nice to get into the habit of subconsciously breaking them, now

Any examples are welcome, even if it isn't your own... must go do some research at lunchtime...

Paulw

The only rule I try to use is the rule of thirds, for landscapes.

Other than that, I just take photos.

Portraits, wildlife, sport, I generally have my main subject in the centre. Works for me, mostly.

rymus

cant say that I actually keep the rules in mind when I've camera in hand..

Maybe I watch the horizon more carefully when taking landscapes, but that'd be about it. Rules are made to be broken.

ThOnda

Well, I was thinking about it a little more and I must say, that I do remember some rules. And using them, I automatically begin look into viewfinder to find the basic composition and so, but after just a split of second, I start looking for a picture in viewfinder. And there are no rules left, just me and my weird/twisted mind :-)

rymus

elven wrote: »

Keep it clean now... :rolleyes:

I think you might want to consider putting that in your sig..

Oriel

Why don't we start a rule-breaking thread, but this time about the Photography forum?

rymus

you get started and I'll be along later on...

Hugh_C

elven wrote: »

Getting down to their level when photographing children?

Kids are often at their best when looking up, adults too for that matter when they get a certain heft of chins to conceal.

I'm finding this square thing hard to compose for on the medium format. My unconscious inclination is to go for thirds, but I dunno ...


I guess the rule I'm breaking the most at the moment is adding vignettes to EVERYTHING

Third_Echelon

Sebzy wrote: »

Rules what rules break them all.
Get your camera out and have fun the rules only get in the way.

Feckin rules

Yeah same here... I don't abide by any rules..

I usually see a shot in my head first, imagine how I want the picture to look like and try to capture it as best I can.

Sometimes the results are better than I had hoped for... sometimes not

Fenster

I don't intentionally, except for portraits. I prefer to put people off-centre as it gives (to me at least!) a sense of well, life. Go look at this one for an idea.

kensutz

I break every possible rule but say the last 2 months I've been focusing on rules of thirds amongst other things. Have to say I'm behaving myself after reading The Photographers Eye which gives illustrations on how to capture images correctly.

amcinroy

When I started photography 12 years ago I started on my todd. For 5 years I didn't buy magazines, I didn't submit images for critique, I didn't know anything about rules. My photos were seen by nobody but myself.

Then 5 years later I picked up a magazine and read all about these rules and was surprised to find that many of my best photographs adhered to them.

Now why is that? Probably because they are based on compositional geometry that the brain finds satisfying.

So my opinion is that you should follow your gut feeling regarding your photography. You will know instictively what works and what doesn't. Don't blindly follow rules but understand why they often work to make better photographs.

Above all, don't force your photographs to meet those rules and learn to understand them for yourself. In this one I was tempted to put the horizon on a third. I didn't.



Andy

thebaz

hughchal wrote: »

Kids are often at their best when looking up, adults too for that matter when they get a certain heft of chins to conceal.

agree,if your subjext is looking down they look more powerfull, and vice versa (helpless) -- so mix is good

Fenster

Calina

amcinroy wrote: »

When I started photography 12 years ago I started on my todd. For 5 years I didn't buy magazines, I didn't submit images for critique, I didn't know anything about rules. My photos were seen by nobody but myself.

Then 5 years later I picked up a magazine and read all about these rules and was surprised to find that many of my best photographs adhered to them.

Now why is that? Probably because they are based on compositional geometry that the brain finds satisfying.

So my opinion is that you should follow your gut feeling regarding your photography. You will know instictively what works and what doesn't. Don't blindly follow rules but understand why they often work to make better photographs.

Above all, don't force your photographs to meet those rules and learn to understand them for yourself. In this one I was tempted to put the horizon on a third. I didn't.



Andy

+1

Ricky91t

amcinroy wrote: »

When I started photography 12 years ago I started on my todd. For 5 years I didn't buy magazines, I didn't submit images for critique, I didn't know anything about rules. My photos were seen by nobody but myself.

Then 5 years later I picked up a magazine and read all about these rules and was surprised to find that many of my best photographs adhered to them.

Now why is that? Probably because they are based on compositional geometry that the brain finds satisfying.

So my opinion is that you should follow your gut feeling regarding your photography. You will know instictively what works and what doesn't. Don't blindly follow rules but understand why they often work to make better photographs.

Above all, don't force your photographs to meet those rules and learn to understand them for yourself. In this one I was tempted to put the horizon on a third. I didn't.



Andy

+2

And fenster you always seem to take shots of children with really cool eyes
they are such a cool blue

elven

I dunno. I know what you're saying andy, and that example is impossible to argue with!

I just found that my gut instinct was following those naturally balanced, geometric, 'comfortable' compositions where everything has its rightful place in the frame, nothing is cut off, it could have been arranged by a graphic designer. And it's started to feel very very boring, and repetitive, and formulaic, and unchallenging (this is mine I'm talking about mind). So I started thinking about going against those fairly well-practised compositional skills, and trying to put things off balance, trying to pull the viewer's attention into the frame in a different way, maybe not having the focus on the most obvious area - changing the mood by going against those expectations. I don't want to shoot something that looks like it wants to be in national geographic, or on a postcard, or in a frickin air freshener advertisement - I want to get away from that slick commercial style. Landscapes seem to be one thing that's very, very difficult to work against the accepted standards with, because all you really have to work with is what's in front of you and you're presenting a more literal representation of reality than if you're close up on something, and using shallow depth of field, or working something from an abstract angle.

I also read something interesting about how changing lenses, and changing our camera's viewing eye, changes the perspective in the picture and the relationships between objects in the frame. Yes, in theory, we all know about that stuff. We know that wide angle lenses let you get more in, telephotos single out and flattens, wide angle makes the distance between close objects and background ones greater and telephoto lenses compress that space, but how much do we use that? And how many of our pictures are taken from 5-6ft off the ground (eye level)? Do we ever think about changing our angle, our perspective on a scene, making it come across how we want by manipulating these things?

I understand that we all have different tastes here, and that's the beauty of the place. But is there anyone aspiring to something that wouldn't win a camera club competition, or end up on the cover of photography monthly? There's a huge amount of skill going into those kinds of images - but that's simply one direction you can take. Is anyone going in any others?

Hugh - i could have sworn you crop down to a square quite often from your digital shots - is it something you only see after the fact, or is a particular kind of shot that suits it? I crop to square so often i wished there was a frame i could put on my 350D, like the holga one... :rolleyes:

Spyral

fenster those girls eyes look demonic !!!

but addionally on topic; beauty is in the eye of the beholder i guess !