Photography Composition :: Rule of Odds

Hey everybody, welcome back once again to another episode of The Art of Photography. My name is Ted Forbes, and we're continuing along today with our composition series. And I'm really pleased that this has been something that I think people, I've gotten really good feedback on this, and I think you guys are really liking this. And it's something that you don't see addressed a lot in podcasts, I know this is very educational in nature and somewhat more of a how-to kind of thing than it is just photography news and stuff. But we've had really good feedback on this, and particularly it's kind of cool because we've been keeping the composition blog that's going on with this, it's only composition concepts and material. And I think that's been really fun too. And it's creating a nice resource to have all this stuff together. And today we're going to get into one of the first rules, so to speak. And I want to talk a little bit about rules before we get into it. And if you look back, I think we started doing this, I believe it was episode 113. And we were talking in that episode about how some of the early photographers were making their mark and trying to lay their claim to fine art by copying famous paintings and the past masters. And the George Frederick Watts quote I really like, and I think it applies to what we're starting to talk about today when we get into some of our rule subjects, and that was that rules, and he was saying this to Julia Margaret Cameron, but rules will only get you so far and you need to learn by getting out there and copying and analyzing work, so to speak. And that's what she did a lot of, was kind of doing interpretations of paintings. And I want to eventually take the direction of the composition stuff that we're talking about to that space, where we kind of start looking at paintings and what you can learn from that kind of thing, even though that's much different than photography. But for our purposes here today, we're talking about rules. And the first rule we're talking about is the rule of odds. And I want to say this about rules first. Rules, and there's a lot of ways you can say this. You hear people say they're meant to be broken. I really don't like the term rules, because the term rule implies that as a photographer, you're stuck, you have to apply this. This is, there's only one way of doing it. This is a rule you have to follow. And that's not what rules are in art or composition. You can certainly break the rules. But what I like about them is to think of them as maybe guidelines that can help you. And if you understand one of these concepts, so for instance today we're talking about rule of odds, we've talked about rule of thirds before on here. But anyway, these rule concepts, it's like if you can just kind of learn what to do with them, then at least they're on your mind. So when you do know that you're going to deviate and do something that goes against one of these rules, that there's a good reason for it. Or even on a very base level, it can just improve your composition in general. Let me also say this, that with rule type stuff, and as we get into some of these rule concepts, I'm going to show you some real world examples of ways you can practice these. Now practice is something that you don't see a lot of in visual arts. And I have a music background, and practicing is a key component to visual, or excuse me, audio composition, or to playing guitar, or piano, or singing, or whatever it is that you do. When I was in music school, everybody practiced nonstop. I mean, seeing people go hit the practice rooms for six hours on a day where they had that kind of time was not unusual at all. And you don't see that in photography as much, and I think it's too bad. And I think because there's so many photographers out there, that's one of the reasons why there's so many kind of mediocre photographers out there, and very few good ones. The good ones understand how to practice, understand how to learn from some of the mistakes they make, and understand how to learn from a lot of these concepts they're grasping. And so with the rule concepts that we're going to talk about here, I want to come up with some ways and some assignments that you guys can practice these things, because I think that's key. And when you practice, it's about, maybe it's just something you're setting up at your house. You're not going in with the intent that these are going to be the ultimate shots, the best things you've ever done, artistically or creatively. They're not. It's just for learning purposes. And so don't get caught up with doing a lot of post-production, things like that. You just want to go in, learn how to apply these rules with just some simple objects, or maybe you have some friends that you can do some test portraits with. If they don't come out, that's fine. But at least what you want to do is understand where this rule kind of concept is coming into play with these, and learning the concepts behind this kind of stuff. So that being said, let's talk about the rule of odds today. I just want to give you that preamble, because I really don't like that term rule. You should learn them. You should know what they are, because if you're going to go outside of that, there usually is a reason why. And we'll talk about some of that when we start looking at some images in a second. But let's talk about rule of odds. And the rule of odds is a very simple principle. And all the rule of odds states is that typically, and there's been some psychological comparisons to this, that the human eye, we like to, we find images pleasing that kind of fall into a certain balance and a certain kind of, oh, this way of sewing together visually, this harmony that we interpret the world as being. And I know that that's really out there as a description. It's very simple, though. The rule of odds simply states that if you have groups of subjects in your photograph, okay? So if you're shooting a portrait of somebody or a headshot, it's typically just one object. But if you have more than one object, you can have multiples, that things are more pleasing to look at that fall into groups of odd numbers. So for instance, three is what you want. I wouldn't really go higher than that. And it's hard to call this the rule of three because it's confusing with the rule of thirds. But odd numbers of groupings tend to be more pleasing than even numbers of groupings. This is absolutely, as you can see already, not a rule because that would, you know, if you said a rule, then that means you can never have only two subjects in your image, and that's not the case at all. But it's just simply a guideline that states that odd numbers of groupings or groups of three typically are more pleasing than even numbers. So four becomes a little too much sometimes. It starts dividing your attention in a weird way. One can be a little too simple, a little too plain. But having this aspect of having a group of three is really important. I think this is also really important. I think where this rule starts to come into play more is when you have lots of groups of subjects. So for instance, let's say you're shooting a group of a bunch of people or a bunch of things. And we're going to look at an example of this because I think Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was, you know, really exemplifies in a perfect way a lot of these things, really did a nice job with this. But having more than one subject, sometimes if you can group them into groups of three in your composition, it creates a very pleasing effect. It creates more harmony, more balance, sometimes some symmetry into the image. But it does definitely create a more balanced image that is more pleasing visually to look at. Like I said, and I hate to, you know, keep beating this up, but rules are guidelines. And that's what we're talking about here. So what I want to do is we're going to take a look at some images, and I want to talk about some ways in which you can start practicing this on your own and do some shooting of your own and kind of start getting a grasp of these concepts. I hope that all these concepts we've talked about so far in the show, if you're new to the show, you can go back and watch them. But I hope that you're trying to implement and practice using all of these in your own skill as a photographer, and practice is key. So let's come over to the computer, let's have a look, and let's check out some images. We're going to move over to Pinterest now, and I want to look at the images that I've put up for the rule of odds this week. Very simple stuff here, like I mentioned a minute ago. I'm going to start off with a couple images that, these are a couple images that I did a few years ago. The three eggs. You create your interest, you have three subjects. I did these with a very high-key lighting palette and just kind of trying to suggest the outline so you don't see the full shape of the egg. But the fact that there are three rule of odds in composition. Now rule of odds, remember this states that you would be dealing with odd numbers. And we're really not going to go much higher than three or maybe five. And I'm going to show you why. Three apples. Again, just very simple symmetry, very simple use of the rule of odds on that. Here's another image that I did that this is what I want to show you where this starts to go a little bit different. Yes, there are five apples sitting on this table. However, because of the scale and the relationship, this ends up being more like a unit of one and less of a group of five. You really don't perceive these as five objects. I mean, some people might, but this really, it still meets the rule of odds because my odd number would be one in this case, but you're starting to see some texture over here in the table. So this really becomes your three rather than the apples because they're so close together in the scale, they become a group. So what do you do when you run into an issue like this, where you're dealing with more than one thing? This is an Henri Cartier-Bresson image, and this is one of my favorites of his. And you are dealing with way more than three or five people. In fact, when it becomes more than three or five subjects, it's very difficult for the eye to delineate or even define how many there really are. There could be 10, there could be 12, there could be seven, there could be 20, you know, whatever. And so what he's done in this composition is actually grouped them. So the subjects you're going to see as groups and it becomes three. You see the gentleman, the priest speaking on the right, the woman walking in the middle, and then you see the group of gentlemen on the left as a group. So this becomes three groups rather than a lot of people. So this is a very clean way of organizing. That's what you want to try and do when you're dealing with large groups. So really, rule of odds, it covers the number three. You may deal with more like five, but not much beyond that. A couple others that I want to show you that are just great classic examples. Sally Mann, one of my favorite photographers, she's alive and working today. Highly recommend her work. Go check her out if you haven't. This is a shot of her children. You can see obviously three subjects. But the way they're presented, the obvious standout here is the girl in the middle smoking the cigarette, obviously because of her extreme youth. She's way too young to be smoking. So there's something that kind of grabs your eye right there. And then you have the girl on the right who's less, you know, more and more darker light. She's looking off. You don't see her face. And finally, the boy on the stilts in the background. It's a really cool, trippy image who's blurred out. So you definitely have a point of focus, but you have two other figures that incorporate into the rule of odds. And they balance the image out a little bit, which is really interesting with the three subjects. A famous, famous image. This is Elias Goldinsky, the three women, 19th century picture. Just very beautiful, very simple. You have these three women as your subjects and the interest is created mostly in the way that they're looking into different places. It's very underlit. You don't see a lot of definition in their faces. In fact, I see more light defining the hair, the silhouette, the face lines than you do the actual faces themselves. Beautiful image, classic image, very famous. Another famous image. This is Edward Steichen. And this is the famous Rodin portrait, Rodin, the thinker. This is particularly interesting. I'm going to tie this in with another composition podcast that we did where we're talking about negative space. It was the last one. And if you look in here, Rodin is on the left and he is echoing or creating a symmetry or a balance to his famous sculpture, The Thinker, which is there on the right. They are both actually negative space in a lot of ways. Very low definition, not a lot of texture, just enough to define that, yes, that is Rodin's profile. And that is the sculpture of The Thinker. The sculpture in the back, which would in classic means be the negative space, has a lot of detail to it. The white sculpture of the guy with the beard in the back. And so this is a really interesting example of how you have negative space here. It's working in the opposite way you would expect it to. Negative space is supposed to be low activity, low interest, low focal point. And here it is, the focal point. So this is a really interesting image in that sense. And Stechen was amazing. And of course, it was posed and meant to be that way. A couple simple images. Keith Carter, another one of my favorites. You need to check him out. Texas photographer. Very beautiful. He calls this a nocturne. It's just simply a piece of fruit, be it an apricot or a peach or something, and it's shot at dusk. So you see either the sun or what's presumably the moon is the lighter object, piece of symmetry. They are opposites. One's dark, one's light. And then you have a small clump of leaves off the fruit in the back. Beautiful use of not only rule of odds, but just just very simple symmetry in an image and how that works. Another image that I want to show you is another Keith Carter. Nothing fancy going on here. It's just a great composition, a beautiful image of the three horses. They're all white. There's a certain sense of similarity that they have, but at the same time, a very pleasing grouping of three subjects. Not a whole lot to say about that. Another one I want to show you here, and I think this is important, too, and we'll close out with this one. Another Keith Carter image. But this is an interesting one because technically there are five subjects in here. They're the two cats that are sitting on this bench in the front. And then these three windows of some gothic sculpture, gothic structure, like a cathedral or a church or something. And they're blurred out in the top, which is a technique that Keith uses a lot. But just on a compositional level, there's five elements here. And you really, because of the scale of the cats in the front, it's almost like you have two elements there versus the three to make your five. But what's interesting is I think what really stands out are the three windows. And that is a classic rule of odds grouping of three within the composition. And what I want you to do is look at that. And how would that change everything if it were only two windows or if it were four windows? If you have an even number grouping, it does change. You can kind of visualize that in your own head when you're looking at this. And I think that is the important takeaway here. And what you want to start to see in your own work is what would things change if I changed that rule of odds or if I changed any composition technique? But particularly in this one, because it's a really easy one to grasp, you know, how would it change the feel? It would look different. How would it affect what's going on? So anyway, once again, you can check this stuff out on Pinterest if you want to get a sneak peek before the show comes out. I kind of assemble these as I'm going along. And it's just Pinterest dot com slash Ted Forbes. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line, email me, hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, whatever, and ask away. And once again, it's been the Art of Photography and we'll see you next time.