The Power of 3

"A good photograph is knowing where to stand." Ansel Adams

A question that often comes to my mind is "Why did I take this photo? What was it about this scene that made me want to photograph it? I get that light plays a significant part in all this and indeed, poor lighting is the primary reason for putting the camera away. But obviously, there are other things going on. Take composition for example. When I think of composition, I think of placement of elements, and which elements to include or not to include within the frame. And it is all for one purpose - to create a visually appealing image.

Several years ago, I posted the image above online and someone commented with a compliment on my use of three objects instead of two or four. Up until then, the number of objects in my photographs was not on my conscious. But that comment struck me because when I looked at the image with this new thought, I realized the meaning of it. From that point on, I considered the number of objects when choosing to create or when composing a photograph. Later, I learned I was following a composition rule - the rule of odds.

The rule of odds applies to odd numbers up to about 7 or 9 (except one). Among them, 3 stands out. There is something about the number three that affects the human brain in an intriguing way. As a teacher, I learned that students understood better when content was boiled down to three main points. Our brains seem to retain information better when it has only three things to remember. Three appears frequently in stories; three bears, three little pigs, three guesses, three wishes. Lectures, stories, video tutorials, blogs, etc tend to have three parts, introduction, main content and summary. And let's not forget the religious symbols as well (Father, Son and Holy Ghost).

The number three also has a visual or aesthetic appeal to our brain. This is where the rule of odds comes into play. It seems that the brain likes seeing one object framed by two other objects. Compared to only two objects which our brain perceives as competing with each other, three objects provide harmony to the scene.

It seems counter-intuitive to inject rules into art, because the word "rule" implies rigidity and having to do something we don't want to do. But the thing is, composition rules really work. To help get around the negativity of rules, maybe we can stop thinking of them as rules and instead think of them as elements our brain find most visually appealing. We photograph what we love to see. And sometimes we snap the photo in the moment without much thought and then move on. But when we are in the mindset of creating an image rather than snapping a photo, we actually apply composition rules, consciously or subconsciously. In other words, we find elements that are visually appealing. We evaluate the scene and create a composition within the frame of the camera's viewfinder. We apply composition rules by moving around and viewing the scene from various perspectives, and by considering things like depth of field, lighting, colors, movement, and so on. We do this to find the most visually appealing composition, not because we think we have to follow rules.

If we can think of nature photography as a form of art, than how is an artistic photograph created from nature? Does the artist consciously look for composition rules in nature or is the artist naturally drawn to a scene because of the composition rules being followed by nature? The answer may be in the colloquial saying "I know it when I see it."

Our brains aesthetically follow the rule of odds most of the time when we photograph what we love because we are naturally drawn to what is visually appealing to our brains.  Once you recognize that the rule of odds can play a very significant part in your creation of artistic nature images, you will also learn that the most powerful part of photography is the ability to capture those three objects in an infinite number of ways. This is because an artistic photograph requires much more than just three objects.

And that is where making photography an art requires so much more than just visual appeal. Composition rules or visual appeal is a great place to begin, but certainly photography as an art goes well beyond that.