Dear Introductory Art Teacher, College Level.

September 26, 2007 6:51 PM

On what basis is it that introductory courses stress avoiding a centered composition?

I understand that in some respect, it's done with the assumption that students are presently in the naive habit of always/only centering things, and that being told not to do so may helpfully push them into expanding how they frame their pictures.

But is there any basis in believing that this method is more effective than teaching, from the get-go, that it's often appropriate, the key is to know when (and to have considered a range of alternatives beforehand). ..asked by someone who's already learned from 10+ years of mistakes and observation, just now taking an introductory course. Also, I've probably enrolled in four introductory photo classes over the years (purely for darkroom access) and those instructors also stressed the same principles.

If an immediate example is needed: here.

Tangentially: is this one of those things where other cultures (China) exhibit a completely different norm?

posted by unmake to education (14 comments total)

They are encouraging students to compose their works in the Golden Ratio.
posted by jamaro at 7:06 PM on September 26, 2007

I'm a bit confused by your question.

Because centering the subject results in a static, lifeless composition. This rule has its origins in fine art painting. The objective of the composition is to move the observer's eye around within the frame.

The reason its something that has to hammered in in photography is that it is necessary to center the subject to properly focus the subject and meter the light. The photographer has to learn that once they focus and meter, they then need to move the camera and frame their composition. This is not intuitive (and was considerably less obvious decades ago).

Note that the rule only relates to art. It is not the rule in religious iconography, scientific illustration.

I believe this method is better taught at the outset to force the eye to develop artistically, not mechanically. It's difficult to learn when its appropriate to break the rules unless you learn the rule first.

UIn the photo example you linked, centering the subject works because the sheet behind the subject (being matched to the shape of the photo itself) exaggerates the perspective. This exaggerated perspective draws the eye into center of the photo, forcing your eye to bounce back and for between the photo edge, the sheet and the subject.

The photos would not have anywhere near the same impact without the sheet.
posted by Pastabagel at 7:12 PM on September 26, 2007

I believe this method is better taught at the outset to force the eye to develop artistically, not mechanically. It's difficult to learn when its appropriate to break the rules unless you learn the rule first.

It is this belief that I'm questioning. It makes a sort of intuitive sense, but I can just as well imagine some non-intuitive method being more effective. Do teachers ever drastically change their methods, to make sure that how they're teaching is really the best way?

Because if they're simply teaching as they were taught - on and on through the generations...
posted by unmake at 7:21 PM on September 26, 2007

Off-centred photos are meant to be dynamic, eye-catching etc. But AF chips are really designed to focus best on centrally positioned subjects.
posted by oxford blue at 7:27 PM on September 26, 2007

It might just be a way to help people realize they are composing inside a rectangle. If you go do draw on a piece of paper or fame a photo in a camera and simply start to draw (or focus) in the center of the frame, without understanding that the edges of the rectangle you’re working in will play an important role in the final composition, your results won't be as intentional in relation to that boundary. I think you’re right in seeing that it’s simplistic to say that asymmetrical compositions are “dynamic” and that centered compositions are “static”, but it could be that learning to have an active appreciation of the edges of your media (paper, canvas, camera frame) is best taught to new students with lessons that stress asymmetry, the rule of thirds, etc. In the example you linked to, the elements in the photo have a strong intentional relationship to the edges of the photo, even if it is a centered composition.
posted by JulianDay at 8:01 PM on September 26, 2007

In introductory art courses, the general idea is to get students to learn the basic "rules," so that when they break them later they do it intentionally, with purpose, rather than by accident or default.
posted by Reggie Digest at 8:33 PM on September 26, 2007

I think the problem lies in the fact that there is no right way to take photographs.

So your question about teachers changing methods is not really valid, from the beginning. If there was a right way to take pictures, that's what they would teach, and photos would be uniform and therefore boring, and so bang that way isn't the right way.

So the idea is that this thirds idea makes decent photographs more often than any other standard method. It allows you to move the subject to a number of different places, namely all around the box that represents the third lines. (draw a rectangle with the thirds in it and you'll see what box I'm talking about) This ability to get variety and a decent result consistently is a good recipe for a thing to teach newbies. Then, as everyone else has said, as the photographers progress in their ability to "see" with the camera, they break the rules and are able to get good results without the framework.

To prove this to yourself, do an exercise. Go on a trip and ONLY take pictures with the subject centered. Now go on another trip and ONLY take pictures with the subject on the third lines. See what kind of results you get, in terms of average quality of picture.
posted by zhivota at 8:41 PM on September 26, 2007

Do teachers ever drastically change their methods, to make sure that how they're teaching is really the best way?


This is different than what I thought you were asking. Yes, in fact, they do. Ansel Adams and Mapplethorpe would not teach photography the way the guy at the local community college does. In fact teachers change their own methods as a way of relearning their craft. An example would be a photographer who sets aside his $6000 Nikon rig to take photos with a cheap polaroid.

This is sort of like how painters like Picasso and Pollock first first learned to paint and draw in the classical sense - technically accurately, representational, etc. Only after mastering the technique were they able to effectively abstract it. The don't abstract something in the real world, they abstract from a classical, representational depiction of the real world. But if you don't really know how to draw or paint, how are you going to know what to abstract?

In other words, the painter who can't paint in the traditional sense and decides to become an abstract painter isn't really painting abstracts. He's painting simple shapes. But if Mark Rothko, who knows how to draw and paint in the conventional sense, does it, he is painting something else, a child, a landscape, that only looks like a couple of squares. The creative process is different.

But to get to this point in photography, the artist has to realize that a photograph is created. You make a photograph, using light and composition and focus and DOF etc. You do not "take" a photograph. Take what, and from where? What ends up in the photo is not really how it looked. It is how you want to show something, the thing through the lens of your mind.

As an aside, this is why I can't stand all the people on flickr who praise a photo with "great capture!" Capture? What's in the photo was not in the real world, so how did the photographer "capture" it? It places too much emphasis on luck and the setting, being "in the presence of beauty", rather than in the artist's imagination in knowing how to see beauty in everything, and their skill in being able to bring that out in a photo.

So back to the point, the teachers do have to teach the basics, but they can teach them in different ways. Based on what you are saying, centering the thing you are shooting is intuitive, so you use that and you twist it around. Instead of teaching not to center the subject (subject = real world thing, like a tree), the teacher could teach "what feeling do you want the photograph to evoke", then teach what the composition needs to get that feeling across, and finally tell the student to center that compositional structure in the frame.

For example, the subject, the thing in the photo, might be a tree, but if you want the photo to communicate isolation, then you need a lot negative space around that tree. In fact you need an gross imbalance of negative space relative to the positive space of the tree. Seen in this light, the photograph is really an image of the emptiness around the tree, but not the tree itself. So now, the photographer should center the imbalance in the frame, because that's what he's really making a picture of, and shoot that. In creating this imbalance, it should be obvious to anyone that the tree will very likely end up off center.


I posted an askme about the rules of composition a while ago, because, like you I suspect, I was getting tired of the rules, so I wanted to make sure that (a) I understood them properly, and (b) I understood their relationship to each other completely, because knowing the relationship will tell you how to break one rule without breaking all of them.

In the responses, someone mentioned the book Design and Expression in the Visual Arts by J. F. Taylor. This is the best book I've ever read on the subject of composition, in photography or otherwise. The book costs about $0.50 used. Unlike other books that laundry list rules, this book proceeds from the dot and line to explain how we see images and how our minds deconstruct them. Why do our eyes move in triangles? Why do we looks for points of convergence, etc.

With this understanding, you come to understand why the rules are what they are (rule of thirds, not fourths", why breaking the rules can work, but more importantly, you think more freely about constructing an image because you are aware of how you see things, and you can break down what you see, and then build it up again in the frame, enhancing the aspects you find important to create a unique image.

Also, I'll add one more thing, which is that if you've been taking pictures for ten years, don't waste your time on an intro photo course. Take an intro drawing course, or a watercolor course. If will change how you see shapes and color and it will immediately change how you take pictures, even if you're a lousy sketcher or painter. It teaches your brain how to see in a new way.
posted by Pastabagel at 9:13 PM on September 26, 2007 [5 favorites]

Also, I'd like to point out that in the photos you linked, the sheet is the bounds of the "rule of thirds" box in each photo. In the first one the sheet beings a thid from the top and ends a third from the bottom, but its a bit wide. Except the branches of the tree extend only to one-third of the way in from the edge. So in the first photo, the tree occupies the center horizontal third, and the sheet occupies the vertical center third. Some of the other photos are like this (one axis of the tree and the other axis of the sheet extend to a third of the way to the edge) and in other photos the sheet fills the entirety of the thirds box.

In other words, this photographer is adhering to the rule of thirds very strictly, so they aren't really breaking the rules.
posted by Pastabagel at 9:23 PM on September 26, 2007

Learning to work under constraints is a great way to develop the theoretical skills of many arts. In film school, our first production class had the following rules: No music videos, no guns, no alarm clocks.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:04 PM on September 26, 2007

My photography prof friend responded to the question this way:

Egad. I don't teach such silly rules. I suppose occasionally it comes up that it is a rule, but only in the context of it being essentially worthless as such.
posted by umbú at 4:53 AM on September 27, 2007

Sticking something in the middle is an easy (and often boring) way out of compositional problems. Forcing beginning students to not put things in the middle makes them think about the other things they are supposed to be learning.
posted by bradbane at 7:08 AM on September 27, 2007

I studied art at a school that is considered to have a very good program, and as far as I can recall I never heard a single "rule" about how to make art. What would happen there was the teacher would assign everyone to make a painting and then we would look at them all and someone would ask "why did you center your subject" or "why did you choose to put your subject in that part of the frame". also, why did you use those colors, those brushstrokes, that subject, etc. then, if you couldn't answer those questions you maybe had a problem, or at least some interesting thoughts to apply to your next piece.
posted by lgyre at 9:13 AM on September 27, 2007

also:

Tangentially: is this one of those things where other cultures (China) exhibit a completely different norm?

yes. although I'm not sure about china specifically.
posted by lgyre at 9:16 AM on September 27, 2007