Every Composition Rule Ranked, Plus the One to Skip Entirely

Every photographer learns the rule of thirds early, then spends years collecting other guidelines that promise a more balanced frame. The question worth sitting with is which one actually deserves top billing, and whether the real answer is a technique at all.

Craig Roberts walks through the full lineup of composition tools while filming through a slipped disc pressing on a nerve, which he mentions upfront so the occasional slurred word makes sense. He runs down the rule of thirds first, calling it the king of composition and the one everyone has used, though he warns it can start to feel obvious if you lean on it too hard. From there he moves to diagonal lines, positioning himself so lines run corner to corner rather than flat across the frame for a more dynamic look. He covers the vanishing point next, the tunnel effect that drags the eye toward a single subject, and he frames it as a technique you find rather than force.

Curves get their own moment, with the S curve singled out as the jackpot when a scene hands you one. Roberts points out that any curve inside a rectangular frame tends to work, even a simple C shape or half circle. He then covers framing, using trees to frame other trees, or hiding empty sky and dead space behind a silhouetted foreground element. Dead-center placement earns a spot too, reserved for simple subjects where the middle is genuinely the only place a subject belongs. None of these, he keeps repeating, is his actual favorite, which builds the whole video toward a payoff he saves for the end.

His favorite turns out to be the absence of a rule, composing by feel once every guideline has been absorbed and can be dropped on purpose. The catch he sets up cleanly is that instinct only works after you have used and rejected each technique yourself. You cannot meaningfully break a rule you never learned, so the freedom to ignore the rule of thirds is earned by having shot it dozens of times first. That framing turns "just go with your gut" into something more defensible than it usually sounds.

This lines up with how a lot of working photographers actually shoot once the fundamentals stop being conscious decisions. The guidelines function as training wheels that teach your eye what balance and tension look like, and after enough repetition the analysis happens in the half second before you press the shutter. The same pattern shows up in music, drawing, and writing, where the people who bend the rules most convincingly are the ones who drilled them hardest. If you are early in your photography, the takeaway is to treat each technique as a deliberate assignment, shooting a week of nothing but diagonals or a week hunting vanishing points, so that later the choices become automatic. The goal is to reach a point where you compose a strong frame without being able to name why it works, and that fluency is the whole reward for grinding through the rules first.

There is also one technique Roberts flags as the odd one out, a design he knows exists and has seen described but has never managed to use in an actual photograph. He suspects it belongs to painters working in oils rather than anyone shooting a sensor, and he invites you to send an example if you ever pull it off. His honest verdict is to give that one a miss, which is a refreshing thing to hear from someone teaching composition.

Watch the video above to see which technique Roberts writes off completely, and how he manages a shot where none of the classic rules apply.