The so-called “rules” of photographic composition are, in my opinion, invalid, irrelevant and immaterial—nothing but obscurations between the spirit and the revelation of the world of nature and of man . . . It is affirmed here that there are no rules of composition in photography; there are only good photographs!
—Ansel Adams
In a previous article, as well as in my book, The Interior Landscape, I made the case that so-called “rules of composition,” despite their popularity, in fact are unfounded and unscientific fabrications. While artists working in other media have long abandoned the idea of following rules for visual composition, photographers seem to stubbornly believe and continue to promote their alleged usefulness.
Many artists and philosophers of art in recent decades (in some cases centuries!) have dismissed the idea of rules of composition. Still, even if one believes that such rules exist, there still remains this simple question: what purpose do such rules (even if they existed) serve? Ask a “rule believer” and their response will likely be something along these lines: compositions that follow the rules are “better” than ones that do not follow the rules. This, then, begs a further question: better how?
Let’s consider some of the ways that one composition may be considered as “better” than another:
- Does following rules make a composition more aesthetically pleasing? Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. This means that any so-called rule is of little use without additional rules that define cases where following the rule will produce a more pleasing image, and cases when it will not. Such rules do not—and cannot—exist for the simple fact that aesthetic preference is, as the saying goes, “in the eye of the beholder.”
While it is true that some visual characteristics (e.g., symmetry) do seem to elicit universal appreciation in some cases (e.g., in the perceived appeal of a human face), the appeal of a whole visual composition is decided by each individual person based on multiple factors, some of which are not universal: things like subjective preferences, cultural connotations, extent of knowledge about art and art history, etc. - Does following rules make a composition more creative? No. In fact, the opposite may be true. Creativity is formally defined as the capacity to produce novel/original works or ideas that are deemed appropriate within their domain (i.e., not just novel for novelty’s sake). Following rules restricts artists to preconceived templates, having the effect of limiting novelty and promoting conformity: the opposite of creativity.
- Does following rules make a composition more expressive? It cannot. An expressive composition is one that relates a creator’s subjective feelings. Feelings may span a broad range of degrees, and some are the opposites of others. For example, an artist may wish to express gleeful happiness or crushing sadness. Clearly these different feelings require different approaches, and a given rule can’t be considered “better” for both.
It follows that the only demonstrable advantage of adhering to rules of composition is that it may please critics and judges who happen to believe in rules of composition. I am not saying this facetiously or dismissively. In a world in which the value or even qualification of art is determined largely by the opinions of influencers, critics, and art promoters, pandering to their tastes and beliefs (however unfounded) may have some real-world benefits. But at what cost? To put it bluntly, the cost is nothing short of perhaps the highest-valued virtue in art (at least according to so many claims by artists): the artist’s freedom.
Informed readers may wonder about such (scientifically valid and proven) rules, such as the laws of Gestalt and similar formulations ensuing from rigorous psychological and neurological studies. To be clear, laws of Gestalt are not rules of composition; they are rules of perception. These laws approximate how the human brain processes visual information to make meaning from visual stimuli.
Gestalt rules may be useful and informative to artists in some ways, such as understanding how to draw and direct viewers’ attention toward (or away from) certain areas in the frame, creating certain visual effects, such as perceived continuity where none exists in the visual data, perceived grouping of certain disparate elements, and so on. However, these rules are difficult or impossible to apply to compositions of any complexity. In complex compositions consisting of multiple elements, all elements in the frame—their sizes, placement, hue, lightness, relationship to each other and to the frame boundaries, etc.—collectively influence the composition’s unified effect (i.e., Gestalt) and may affect cognition in ways that are difficult to distill to simple rules. Moreover, we must remember that some rules of Gestalt are explicitly subjective (e.g., rules that depend on a person or group’s interests, shared symbols, beliefs, etc.).
In the absence of rules, how does one learn and evaluate visual composition? Or, to borrow Ansel Adams’s words in the quotation at the top of this page, how does one judge “good photographs”? In his 1974 Albright Lecture, Adams provided an answer. He wrote: “When the artist is confronted with some awesome vista of the world, or with some fragile reminder of the infinite variety of life, or with some significant aspect of society he must respond according to his training, experience, and intuition. (Perhaps intuition comes first!).”
The three terms Adams named—training, experience, and intuition—are not random or separate qualities; they are interrelated. They are also not fixed quantities that certain people possess innately and others do not. We all start with certain degrees of training, experience, and intuition, but we may also develop and improve them with practice. Training (which includes both initial learning and subsequent repetition), along with qualities of experience, build up intuition.
Intuition is the capacity to recognize and grasp certain concepts quickly, without prolonged conscious thinking or researching. The more we do something, the more intuitive it becomes. Repeated practice is necessary to form and to hone the brain circuitry responsible for certain cognitive functions, such as intuitive recognition of good composition or photographs. The more we exercise our intuition for visual composition—which includes learning from both our successes and failures—the better it becomes. In this case, better means becoming more flexible (i.e., consider a broader range of possibilities automatically, without conscious effort), faster, more accurate, and resulting in a higher rate of success.
While we may not know exactly all the parameters and rules our brains use in forming aesthetic judgment—the “algorithm” our brains use to determining the “goodness” of a photograph or composition—we are nonetheless free to use our brains as “black boxes”: feed an image or visualized composition on one end and get a “goodness value” on the other. The more trained our intuition, the more comprehensive, nuanced, and effective our judgment will be.
Of course, since aesthetic appreciation involves subjective factors, there is no guarantee that others will agree with our aesthetic judgment for what makes a “good” image or composition. Trained intuition thus may serve two different purposes: we may become better at estimating what other people are likely to like, and we may evolve our own aesthetic judgment to find value in a broader range of aesthetic creations than what may be intuitive to others (i.e., enable us to enjoy and find meaning in a variety of artistic creations on one hand, but also more selective and critical in what we consider as good on the other hand).
These two benefits of aesthetic intuition may serve us in different ways. Training our intuition for what most people (or a specific target audience) are likely to find appealing can be an invaluable asset if we wish to pursue photography professionally or if we enjoy photography as a social or competitive pursuit. And, training our intuition to broaden and deepen the range of artistic expressions we find personally meaningful and enjoyable—even if not shared by many others—can deepen and enrich the rewards we may find in a variety of art forms—whether as consumers or as creators.
My advice: should you come across lists of tip or rules for “good” composition, take protective measures—avert your eyes, cover your ears, walk away—do whatever you can do to make sure these tips and rules do not end up guiding or influencing your work. And should you come across a teacher or critic who promotes the idea that composition can be reduced to rules, help them become better teachers or critics by suggesting they educate themselves on current thinking about the topic rather than continuing to proliferate obsolete notions. At the very least, don’t expect them to be of much use to you in becoming a better artist.
How does a teacher of art create artistic practice for students that leads to creative freedom without introducing basic skills such as learning perspective, color theory, etc? Are they not in some way constraints?
Thank you for your thoughtful newsletters. They inspire deep reflection.
Great question! There are many ways to teach creative skills using various techniques that encourage divergent thinking, such as remote associations or alternative uses. Unlike skills related to craft (such as color theory or use of perspective), which narrow down the range of “correct” uses, creative skills require the opposite: a relaxation of dogmas and default approaches, broadening the range of possibilities that a student will consider, etc.
There are several good science-based resources that describe ways to encourage creativity. One recently published book I can recommend is The Creative Choice by Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle. It is not specifically about artistic creativity, but about understanding what creativity is in a general sense: things that may help or discourage creative thinking, etc.
Your writings are such a great inspiration, thank you. I never entertained the idea of photography as a profession just a hobby. As a hobby that I set out to learn as much as possible how to make photos that are interesting to me. But of course I fell into the trap of camera clubs, social media and youtube. It is so hard not to get caught up in all of these outside influences but now and then I try to get back on track by reading your articles and rereading your books. I’m 83 and I like my photos, they make me feel good. That is what matters most to me.
Bill McGinnis
Thank you very much, Bill! I agree, of course. Art is one area where each of us has (if they wish) complete freedom to decide what matters and why. Many of the greatest artist we celebrate today were those who stubbornly refused to surrender this freedom.
Very thoughtful column, one of your best, Guy. Your writing is great, but this one is very clear and straightforward to understand. I hope lots of the “rule” photographers take note. I love the freedom of making my pictures without any set rules in mind. It’s so liberating!
Thank you very much, Gary!
Thanks, Guy. I agree to a point. Maybe it would help if we called them guidelines, suggestions, or standards. All photographers have them and they are (at least sometimes) useful. But of course they should be shaped over time by training, experience, and intuition.
For example, one of my rules is to always have the image absolutely level. Some photographers deliberately tilt the horizon, and some seem not to care. But my “rule” leads to “better photographs” in my opinion, the only opinion that matters to me. So I would say that if you see a list of composition rules, don’t avert your eyes, stop to consider whether some of them might lead you to better pictures. At least occasionally.
Thank you, Gary! Certainly, all of us end up adopting some guidelines for our work. The question is whether they are guidelines we take from others uncritically and that may limit our creative choices arbitrarily, or guidelines we choose for ourselves after having researched and vetted them and found them helpful in our individual pursuits. The dictionary definition of “rule” is “a prescribed guide.” A freely chosen guide is more a personal preference than a rule.
The core issue isn’t that photographers cling to outdated beliefs. Instead, the medium’s technical and timing aspects, coupled with its active community and emphasis on visual clarity, ensure that formal guidelines stay relevant and visible. While other media might overlook formal rules as their main issues evolve, photography’s ongoing challenge is about how to select, frame, and organize a part of the visible world within set boundaries. The main question isn’t whether photographers resist change, but whether the medium’s unique demands still prioritize refined formal intelligence over those of many other art forms today.
Thanks, Eli! I’m not sure I understand your argument but perhaps we just differ in what we consider relevant (to use your term) to our work and goals.
I had to think about your thought-provoking article for quite a while. For me, the fundamental question is: What do I need to be creative? Sometimes it really is the rules that I follow at first when taking photos. But I keep questioning them throughout the process, which leads me to different perspectives and possibilities. As a result, there are numerous images with different perspectives, compositions, and so on—including some that no longer have anything to do with the original rule.
Sometimes a very specific feeling I associate with the subject captivates me so much that I consciously choose not to rely on rules. Or because, at that moment, I simply don’t care about rules at all. I simply experiment, play with the subject, and enter into a dialogue. However, I believe that as life experience grows, all sorts of things happen on a deeper level. I probably fall back on rules here as well—perhaps because I’ve set them for myself. Ultimately, I find rules useful because they can be helpful. But it’s important that I constantly remind myself of their existence and question them.
These days, I find photos that strictly follow the rules completely often boring, and sometimes they even make me angry. How many subjects are placed in the lower right third just because someone once decided that centered photos aren’t creative?
Why does the horizon always have to be straight? No—a slanted horizon can sometimes make all the difference because it creates dynamism.
Sometimes, however, I can’t help but wonder if creativity in photography is increasingly running dry—at least if you’re not using the latest technologies.
Perhaps we also need to question our own definition of creativity. What does creativity mean to me? Maybe we should even ask ourselves the provocative question: Is it even worth striving to be creative?
Thank you, Simone!
You asked whether rules are needed to be creative. I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. There is good evidence to show that self-imposed constraints can be useful to creative thinking (in the same way you describe: prompt you to think about possible solutions within the constraints). The problem with rules of composition is that they have no demonstrable value. So, my suggestion: rather than stick to made-up rules, find constraints for your work that DO add value. And, don’t be afraid to break those, too.
There is good evidence that creativity is indeed running dry. Surveys measuring creativity over time show a marked decline in recent years. There is some debate about the reasons, but evidence seem to suggest that this decline at least correlates with the rise of internet technologies, especially social media.
Before asking what creativity means to any individual, I think it’s important to keep in mind that creativity already has a meaning and definition, which is used consistently by researchers and thinkers who study creativity. If we each make ups our own definition, then the word loses meaning as a general term. Scientific definitions of creativity have generally been settled around the 1950s. This paragraph by psychologist Morris Stein is commonly cited when definitions of creativity are discussed. I’ve added italics around what I think are key elements:
The last sentence is the reason why following rules and traditions has the effect of limiting and suppressing creativity.
Your question about whether it is worth striving to be creative is one that occupied many thinkers, including the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who dedicated a book to it titled Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. I think it’s worth reading. It’s also one of the topics I discuss in my own book, Be Extraordinary.
Guy
Thank you very much, Guy, for your detailed answer!
When you say that composition rules are completely useless, I wonder:
Doesn’t the new draw its strength and energy directly from the destruction of the old, which is based on familiar rules? Could artists like Dalí have created anything that could be called creative without that prior knowledge? Without the stability provided by rules, there would be nothing to visually destroy.
“The extent to which a work is novel depends on the extent to which it deviates from the traditional or the status quo.”
In that respect, compositional rules are valuable. Without them, there is no point of reference—unless that point of reference has already emerged from the deviation.
I realize that creativity is closely linked to problem-solving skills. Without creativity, there would be no innovation, and the future would look very bleak.
But in these times of upheaval, after 75 years, shouldn’t we rethink and broaden the definition of creativity? Nothing is set in stone. Being merely “novel and useful” is no longer a human privilege. In a fraction of a second, AI creates something new—ranging from useful solutions to ones that were previously unknown.
But that’s a different topic.
I agree with many of your points, but I don’t see it quite so strictly.
Simone
Here are some thoughts, mostly in agreement, I think, on another excellent and thought-provoking post.
The question of whether there are rules of composition together with the question of whether they are of any use, if they exist, seems to me to depend in part on precisely what we mean by that phrase. Sometimes rules are used to define an activity, such as the rules of chess. Such rules do not tell us which moves people tend to play, nor which moves people ought to play to win a game. A more relevant sense of a rule of composition is descriptive rather than stipulative: it describes certain generalisations of varying strengths or weakness regarding how humans tend to interpret and respond aesthetically to compositions. These might include what you characterise as the “rules of Gestalt”. (Though you distinguish them as “rules of perception”, I think the connection between them and traditional rules of composition may be closer than you suppose.) A third sense is normative: it states how people should compose their images. These last two senses, though distinct from each other, are related to each other by way of the expressive intention of the artist. If we wish to express ourselves to others then we need some understanding of how our audiences “visual language” works. And as you note, a photographer may benefit from understanding how human attention may be directed by the use of compositional elements.
In the descriptive sense I think that there are rules of composition, though none of them are without exceptions and some are too weak to be of much value. I suspect that many who deny the existence of rules of compositions, including, I think, Ansel Adams in that quote, do so with the idea that such rules would needs be exceptionless if they exist at all. (If you cast your eye over Adams’ corpus of landscape images you could make a case, based on the clear preponderance of images in which the horizon is placed at or close to a third, that lends weight to his implicit and presumably unconscious use of the rule of thirds at least much of the time.) Moreover, as you rightly point out in The Interior Landscape, good composition cannot be reduced to rules, tips, or formulas. But that does not imply that there are no rules of composition, understood as generalisations of varying strengths concerning how humans tend to respond interpretively and aesthetically to a composition. Though such “rules of perception” are not in and of themselves rules of composition, they are not unrelated either.
Some of these descriptive rules of composition are plausibly the result of human evolution, and in particular the likely core evolved function of our perceptual experience – namely, to enable successful prediction – whilst some other descriptive rules of composition may be more culturally or historically specific, deriving their utility from established conventions. Humans naturally attend to and respond positively to patterns in their experience, since such patterns are precisely what enables reliable predictions. Moreover, we enjoy knowing (or detecting or figuring out) what comes next. Equally, exceptions to a perceived pattern creates an automatic point of interest and our attention is automatically drawn to such. Surprise is therefore also aesthetically pleasing since it directs us towards a more complex and interesting pattern. Surprise typically arises against a background of a discernable pattern, whether that pattern is found directly within the scene or within our experience of perceptually similar scenes.
Take for example the rule of composition that says that we should place more space in front of an animal than behind it. This is normative, of course, but its value as a norm for guiding composition is plausibly rooted in the fact that we have a natural expectation that creatures with discernible faces will tend to move in the direction in which their faces (or bodies) are “pointing”. This makes the space in front of the animal intrinsically more interesting to us, ceteris paribus, than the space behind it, because that is where we naturally expect the animal to move. Where an animal is going is usually more important or salient (in evolutionary terms) than where it has been.
Are such rules, in the normative sense, of any value? For beginners, I think they usually do have some value. Just as in chess beginners benefit from learning a few strategic rules to guide them: castle early, don’t move your pawns in front of your castled king if you can help it, develop knights and bishops before the queen, vie for control of the centre four squares, and so on. There are reasons, built into the nature of the game, why these rules tend to work in the service of checkmating one’s opponent, but no one would dream of suggesting that good chess moves can be reduced to a set of such rules. Similarly, beginners learning English can benefit from certain spelling rules. Yes, there are exceptions to all such rules, and the experienced player, who has gained a strong intuitive understanding of the game through practice, just as with the experienced writer of English, will implicitly and probably intuitively know when such rules work well and when they do not. Indeed, with sufficient experience they typically dispense with any conscious consultation of such rules in favour of making choices that “feel right”. This is when intuition takes over and provides the better guide.
I would go even further and argue that so-called rules of composition, in the descriptive sense, are in fact essential for the very possibility of expressing ourselves to others through the compositional choices in our work, much as syntactical rules are essential for the possibility of communicating with others in a natural language. Without the existence of at least some rules, whether we are consciously aware of them or relying on direct intuition, our ability to induce in others any specific emotional or cognitive response with a probability greater than pure chance would be impossible.
Clearly, though, it is not pure chance. Some compositions do tend to work better than others to communicate to an audience the artist’s intent. For example, no psychologically healthy individual will look at Picasso’s Guernica and feel tranquility and joy. And nothing needs to be known about the Spanish Civil War for this to be true, for humans, at a sufficiently broad level of abstraction, share a form of life (to use Wittgenstein’s phrase). Picasso understood the effect that elements of his painting would tend to have on his audience and used that understanding to express himself to others through that work. Yes, there is subjective variation in human aesthetic responses to any work, but the existence of subjective variation in aesthetic response does not imply that it is all in the eye of the beholder, nor should this obscure the fact that there are generalisations in our interpretational and aesthetic responses that cut across those subjective variations.
Do such normative rules of composition hinder creativity? There is a danger of this. Certainly, there is a tension between creativity and following normative rules. Slavishly following normative rules of composition at one extreme and unconstrained creative expression on the other are both problematic. The former because it severely limits individual creative expression, and the latter because it severely limits our ability to express ourselves successfully to others. If we are not concerned with expressing ourselves to others, then the utility of descriptive rules of composition and their normative correlates become entirely moot. In any case, there is much middle ground between such extremes and hugely significant room for creative expression to much the same extent as abiding by rules of syntax or spelling in a language (or even to some extent stylistic norms) only minimally constrains the creative freedom of novelists.
Thank you very much for another thoughtful response, Martin!
Before touching on some of your points specifically, perhaps it’s worth elaborating on my point about the “rules” lacking any demonstrable value. I use “value” in the broadest sense possible, including normative, aesthetic, cognitive, and expressive values: there is simply no evidence that these rules reliably or significantly add to any of these.
Given that these rules have been speculated for decades or, in some cases, centuries, and the progress made in scientific studies of aesthetics during this time, I think the lack of evidence for their efficacy is telling. I think this passage by Anjan Chatterjee (director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics) explains well why such rules—specifically in the context of art—are beyond the current capacities of scientific study:
Your comments about “understood generalisations” raises an interesting chicken-and-egg questions: do people consider rule-conforming compositions as more proper because they have become accustomed to seeing many such compositions, or because these rules indeed add some form of value to the art? Again, pointing back to the fact that no rigorous study I was able to find points to the existence of such value (despite decades/centuries of use) suggests to me that they whatever contributions they might make results from trained expectations rather than innate perception. To wit, for centuries artists believed in the so-called “golden ratio,” purely out of habit. But a recent scientific study of it (by Mario Livio) could not identify any artistic value to it. In fact, Livio stated: “History has shown, however, that the artists who have produced works of lasting value are precisely those who have broken away from such academic precepts.”
As far as the rules having value for beginners (the motto “learn the rules, then break the rules”), I believe it is rooted in a misperception. When you instruct people to “break the rules” you are in fact prompting them to invest conscious attention in finding creative solutions. This has nothing to do with the rules, and everything to do with the act of thinking deliberately about the creative problem at hand. Given that these rules have no demonstrable value, it would be like teaching Science students that the Earth is at the center of the universe, then after they have become convinced of this, encourage them to seek alternative theories. It serves no useful purpose. Better to simply encourage people to think beyond their default intuitions when seeking creative solutions, rather than start them off with an error that may lead to formation of bad habits. This has the added value of training intuition so that in time intuitive solutions become more reliable and conducive to creative success. At the same time, we must beware not to turn intuition into prescription or habit, if we wish to remain creative.
Guy