Hello all!
I’ve been searching for a while to find a subject that would literally represent the Golden Ratio rule. I finally found it today and spent around five hours getting the right composition, without it being too obvious! Welcome any CC.
Hope you’re all safe and well 😊
This is lovely. I really enjoy it.
Thanks, Teresa! 😊👍
Hey Mark! Nice shot. I'd love to see the grid superimposed over this. I have also played with trying to impose this rule on less obvious subjects. I was curious if you were working with the golden spiral or golden ratio - related but not the same. If you feel inclined, I love to see your process!
Fun stuff!
Hi Ruth,
It’s not an exact overlay but it uses the principal of the circular motion to guide the eye around the subject and outward to the edge if the frame.
The Golden Ratio is the same as the Golden Rule, it is also called Fibonacci spiral depending on who you talk too. The Fibonacci relates more to how the mathematical approach is used to create a never ending spiral as such if you were to continue to zoom into the centre of said spiral. Either way; Fibonacci, Ratio or Rule all come back to the same guide for composition purposes within a picture 👍
These are closely related concepts and there is a lot of debate as to whether they are, or are not, important to art. Architecture design used to be highly driven by these but no one can argue that people like Gehry create amazing buildings whiteout a hint of them!
There is interesting data that suggests that pattern recognition was one of the first analytical skills our pre-modern ancestors developed on our path to the critical thinking we have today. Because this skill is so fundamental, we inherently find patterns pleasing. (so 'they' say!)
Not that this is really important - just a topic of interest for me so I thought I'd add this. The golden ratio and Fibonacci's (golden) spiral are related but not the same thing.
The golden ratio can be represented in one dimension as a line with 2 parts measuring 1.618:1. It can then be expanded into two deminsions by creating two rectangles whose long edges measure 1.618:1. The next level of complexity is to stack up the pairs of rectangles and this creates the spiral. Math teachers love torturing students with this dual ratio (1.618:1)x2x2x2.... So in essence, the initial ratio is the ruler that the spiral is constructed with.
Other photography rules, such as the Rule of Thirds, are also based on the ratio. The question I am always mulling around is to ' rule or not to rule'. Now that is a tricky question!
Glad you posted this topic. I hope others chime in. Once in a while a post takes on a philosophy spin and it is always interesting!
Again - keep posting your interesting work here! 🤗
Now that's taking composition to the extreme. Normally we look for interesting subjects and perhaps apply rules to aid the composition, if find it intriguing that someone would look to do the reverse.
Of course there's a school of thought that would say that any image that really works would fit into one of the rules or another (or more than one as this does).
At the end of the day it doesn't matter which rule you follow (if at all...), the main goal is to produce something that speaks to the viewer, as this does.
I like the simplicity of the image, and you have done a great job with lighting and controlling the DOF. Not to mention the image is well- balanced....
That’s a very nice comment and some great observations Alan, thank you! 😊👍