I was listening to a podcast today from a source that, in general, is an absolutely excellent source of info, inspiration, and business and technical know-how. His target audience for his technique tips is, primarily the entry-level shooter and he was talking about rules of composition, specifically the Rule of Thirds, and he unfortunately (and I’m sure unwittingly) spread some misinformation about this rule of composition.

First was the problem of his diagram. Now in the audio description, he outlined the basics. You divide the frame up into thirds both horizontally and vertically. Then you place your subject along one of the lines of thirds. It’s especially powerful when you put your subject (or, say, your subject’s eye in a portrait) at one of the intersecting points. That is all well and good, but his diagram looked like this:

This is not a Rule of Thirds diagram, which should have 9 identical rectangles. It looks like the lines were placed at 30% and 60% of the way through, so the middle sections are longer/taller than the end sections.

Now, true, that’s a pretty nit-picky complaint, and if that were the extent of the “problem” I could easily overlook it.

Next is where we start to get into the mythology of the Rule of Thirds. The podcaster introduced the Rule of Thirds as being an almost mystical property in nature. He talked about the Fibonacci Sequence and how it dictates the growth of Nautilus Shells, the pattern of rose petals growing on a flower, and the Rule of Thirds. Now, it’s very true that the Fibonacci Sequence does indeed map out the growth patterns of Nautilus Shells and rose petals (as well as the spinning of galaxies!), it has nothing to do with the Rule of Thirds.

Here is a diagram of the Fibonacci Spiral:

And here is an overlay of the Rule of Thirds grid:

As you can see, the intersections of the Fibonacci Spiral are close, but not equal to the Rule of Thirds.

Why is this important? Because it’s one thing to speak about the Rule of Thirds as a powerful tool of composition, but it’s important not to confuse it with other compositional tools (in this case what is sometimes referred to as the Golden Ratio, or it’s proper name, Phi or ϕ). It’s also important (in my opinion) not to over-inflate the importance of a compositional tool. Indeed the Rule of Thirds is generally held to be a more used and more important rule of composition than is the Golden Ratio, which has all these cool almost-mystical properties.

My last issue with the podcast is that it almost seems like Fibonacci is credited with the discovery of the Golden Ratio (or I guess rather the Rule of Thirds), which is again false. The Golden Ratio was discovered and explored first by the ancient Greeks, about 1500 years before Fibonacci. It is very prominent in the teachings of Pythagoras and in Euclidian Geometry (and other fancy-pants Mathematical terms!). Fibonacci just came up with the sequence which exposed the amazing graphic spiral we now know so well. Indeed Fibonacci wasn’t the first to discover the sequence. He was simply the first European, although from what I understand he discovered it independently. Again, this gets into the “nit-picky” realm mostly because it’s irrelevant to the application of both the Golden Ratio as well as the Rule of Thirds in Photography, but if you’re going to bring it up…

So what’s the lesson? Well, I think it’s two-fold. First, if you’re learning you need to look around at more than just one source of information. If you’re teaching, it’s important to really know your stuff and check your sources.

Again, I want to stress that I’m not suggesting this podcaster’s advice in general is shoddy. 99.9% of the time they give fantastic information. Well thought out, well reasoned, and well researched. But sometimes things slip through the cracks. This one really surprised me because it’s a pretty basic one.

And for more information about Phi, the Fibonacci Sequence and other things related to the Golden Ratio, check out the wonderful book by Mario Livio The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number.