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.
