


How do you deal with them?įirst, identify only a couple of the elements surrounding your subject that are important to your shot and that you have some control over. Indoors, you have furniture, windows and appliances, to name a few.

In an outdoor setting, you may have trees, vehicles, landmarks and the like. To apply the rule of thirds, move your camera so that your subject is on one side of the frame, resting along one of the two horizontal or vertical lines, preferably at a point where those lines intersect.Īnother important element of your shot is your subject’s surroundings. The rule of thirds, however, generally dictates that centering your subject will create an uninteresting composition. If your subject is very large, like the White House, for example, you don’t really have a choice but to center it in the screen. Your first impulse may be to position your subject smack dab in the center of your frame. So what are some of the key elements of your shot? First and foremost is your subject. The result, so the theory goes, is a more well-balanced visual image. Then, as you shoot, you place key elements of your shot somewhere along those lines, preferably at the points where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect. The result is an imaginary tic-tac-toe board that fills the video screen. In the interest of expediency, videographers have adopted a modified version of the Golden Mean, called the rule of thirds.Įssentially, the rule states that you should mentally divide your frame into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. For our purposes, however, it won’t be necessary to investigate the long, tedious details of the Golden Mean.
