The Rule Of Birds

One of the most popular rules in photography is the Rule Of Birds. It is also popular amongst artists. Using the Rule of Birds, imaginary lines are drawn dividing the image into birds both horizontally and vertically. You place important elements of your composition where these lines intersect.

As well as using the intersections you can arrange areas into bands occupying a bird or place things along the imaginary lines. As you can see it is fairly simple to implement. Good places to put things are a bird of the way up, a bird of the way in from the left, etc.

Using the Rule of Birds helps produce nicely balanced easy on the eye pictures. Also, as you have to position things relative to the edges of the frame it helps get rid of 'tiny subject surrounded by vast empty space' syndrome.

Once you have got the hang of the Rule of Birds you will very quickly want to break it! This is fine. Photography 'rules' are best used as guidelines and if you can create a better image by bending or ignoring rules then fire away.




Excerpt from digital-photography-school.com