Dracula’s Apartment at Mid-Day. Denver, Colorado, 2013
These “Rules” may already be quite familiar to you…surely you have read them somewhere or someone knowledgeable has pointed them out–maybe even as part of a critique of your work!
1) Always place your horizon at the 1/3 or 2/3 point in the frame.
2) Never put the horizon across the middle of your image.
3) Always make sure the horizon is straight.
4) Always place the center of interest on one of the 1/3 points on the Rule of Thirds grid and never place it in the center.
5) Always make sure your center-of-interest is sharp.
6) There should always be good detail in both the highlights and the shadows.
7) Your color balance should always be neutral.
8) Only shoot at the “golden hour” near sunrise or sunset.
9) Always have a foreground object in your landscape photographs–in fact, make sure you have fore, middle AND background elements.
10) Strive to make your image as sharp as possible.
11) Always focus 1/3 of the way into your scene to maximize depth-of-field.
12) Always use the lowest ISO setting to avoid digital noise (modern “grain”).
13) Always shoot away from the sun–that is, with the sun at your back. Never shoot into the sun.
And so on…
NOW NOTE THIS: THESE ARE NOT RULES! They are mere “guidelines.” In many cases they will indeed work and can help elevate your pictures from the level of the snapshot to something a bit higher. In other cases, however, they can easily result in boring, static, typical, usual, predictable, normal pictures. So, learn them, but then break them when appropriate…when your instinct cries out to do so.
When you do break with the guidelines, be conscious of why you are deviating with the so-called “norm.” Hopefully, you are doing it on purpose to achieve a very specific artistic effect.
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