Photo Composition Technique – The Feinberg Rule
I’ve covered the “Rule of Thirds” well enough already (How To Take Interesting Photos, Rule of Thirds – An Observation). As mentioned before, from an artist’s perspective I consider the “Rule of Thirds” to be more of a guideline, rather than a so-called “rule”. This rule is not something required for each and every photo that you take.
I would like to mention another composition technique that I learned during my undergraduate days in fine arts. This one was taught by one of my favorite painting professors, David Feinberg (work), an Associate Professor for Drawing & Painting at the University of Minnesota. I’ll call this the Feinberg Composition Technique #1, although I think he would find this a bit funny.
What the Feinberg Technique #1 is, is a guideline for where to crop (frame) photos and other 2D visual imagery like paintings, drawings, etc. It’s used to balance a composition within a set area so that it doesn’t look like it’s off-balance or has too much open space (negative space) on one side of the image compared to the other.
Here’s an example of how this technique is applied. If you look at this photo, you’ll notice a couple of things. First, there is no alignment to the “Rule of Thirds” grid (the bottle isn’t aligned to the one third grid). Secondly, you’ll notice that the main subject, the bottle, is tilted and off-center. This in itself would normally cause some tension in the image.
With these two details in consideration, you still get the sense that you’re looking at a well-balanced composition that seems to work just fine.
So what is it that makes this photo look like it’s balanced and properly cropped? Well, it’s actually nothing to do with the main subject at all, but rather everything to do with where the background elements are touching the edge of the image. Basically, where the photo is cropped.
The Feinberg technique measures each point around the edge of the image and then compares the location of those points to the opposite edge. If they match up, you end up with better cropped image. Let’s look a little more closely to how this works.
If you look at the photo to the right, you’ll see where I’ve marked the points at which certain objects touch the edge of the overall image.
Each colored arrow is related to it’s counterpart on the opposite edge of the image. For example, the top purple arrow is almost exactly the same length as the bottom purple arrow. The length of these arrows represents the distance from the image corner to the point where an object touches the edge of the image.
The goal with this Feinberg Technique #1 is to learn how to crop an image or photo so that each point(s) has an equal counterpart (or spacing) on the opposite edge.
An important item to consider here is that the measurement of these points don’t always need to originate from the same edge as it’s counterpart. For example, the purple arrow is measured from the left edge of the photo. With a different image, you could crop the top from the left and the bottom from the right. You just need to make sure that they are equal in length.
This photo could be tightened up just a bit more than it is - compositionally - but I think you get the point here. When you’re framing your photo’s or cropping them in a photo editor, try to see if you can employ this technique. It’s a very useful technique when you’re not really sure how to crop a more complex photo.
Source: Digital Camera Notebook
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