So, how do I make them? Do I use any fancy software? Nope, it’s very straight forward! All you really need is a photo editor of some kind that will allow layers, personally I use Photoshop Elements. If you have Adoboe Lightroom you can really speed up this process by importing all your photographs and exporting them all as a smaller size (you’ll probably be dealing with a lot of photographs, e.g. my Trafalgar Square one is about 40+). Next, just open them all up in your editor, manually place them on your canvas 1 by 1, and roughly line them up. For a more arty effect don’t be afraid to keep it somewhat messy. To achieve something closer to a smooth pano then somewhat line them up as best you can. That’s pretty much it really.  You can now create a final merged layer at the top (in Photoshop Elements select top layer, hold down alt+ctrl+shift and press E, merged layer at the top). Perform any further edits you deem necessary to this merged layer.

Here’s a few samples:

Anyway, it got me to thinking about studio photography in general, it’s almost the office job of a photographer. The way I see it is you spend all day  in box or room lit like a football stadium, or at a PC editing/choosing photos. Granted, at the higher end of the studio photographer food chain they probably have light “managers”, make up artists, photoshop wizards, even in some cases (*cough* Rankin *cough*) you might have a “button clicker”!

This actually begs another question, at the top of this food chain what exactly is a studio photographer? Think of it like this, you don’t edit the photos, or decide about the light. You might tweak the light or make decisions, but effectively you’ve got some poor guy/girl in there doing the grunt work for you. Even funnier, you don’t even press the shutter button. So, aren’t you actually a shoot director?

Sure enough, that’s a very small percentage of the chain. But what about the rest of us? Are we effectively the office workers of the photography market?

Firstly, for those of you who are knew to this, let’s explain what the rule is. Basically, you put important objects or things of interest on a “third”. This “third” depends on the object or “thing of interest”. Let’s go really basic with this to show you what it means and only deal with 1 third at a time.

Horizontal and Vertical thirds
If it’s a horizontal line you’d place it on a “third” so that you divide the photo into 1/3 and 2/3 each side of the horizontal. A good example is the Horizon. As you can see from the following photo the horizon in the distance divides the photo so that the top third is sky and the bottom two thirds is everthing else.

On the other hand you can do the opposite and reverse this rule, so that the third is on the bottom. Like so:

I’ve used the horizon in my examples, but you can apply this to any horizontal. Roof of a building, a row of windows, anything that you feel should sit on that “third”.

When it comes to verticals the rule pretty much holds the same concept except, you’ve guessed it, you divide the photo so that 1/3 is on the left/right and 2/3 is on the other side. I won’t go through the same explanations as it should be evident as to what you do. Like in the following shot the pipe/wrench is sitting on the left hand third:

Points/Objects on a third
For points or single objects you’ll often find these look good on intersecting horizontal and vertical thirds. What does this mean? Take this guide with the marked intersections as an example:

So we have 4 intersecting points. This is a guide of where to put certain objects of interest. Like this example:

As you can see the cyclist is in and around that top left intersecting point. This composition felt right to me because I have that path leading up to the cyclist, and then you’re led to the right towards where she is eventually heading.

Easy as that eh? Not really… I could bend the rule to my liking and stick a single object of interest bang centre on a horizontal third whilst also ignoring the rule in other areas. Take the lifebuoy in this photo. It sits almost exactly on the horizontal third. But the sea and pebble horizontals don’t:

And it doesn’t even end there. Sometimes the rule just doesn’t make sense. For example, recently I was taking a photo of a sunset, and quite frankly the buildings in the landscape leading up to the horizon were very distracting. So I just composed them out of the shot and concentrated my composition towards a very interesting cloud pattern:

So… the point is, it’s not so much a rule… it’s more of a guide

Why the arguments?
There’s the 2 problems with the rule of thirds:

First one is once you tell a budding photographer about this rule they can get a bit over obsessed with it. Everything get’s put on a third. They crop to a third, compose to a third, etc. Quite frankly, some times this ruins the photo. Once you learn the whole thing about thirds you need to expand that thinking a bit. Now that you’ve learnt to place different objects or areas of interest in certain parts of the photograph, try pushing them further out. Or even go back to why a central shot can sometimes have a dramatic effect. For example, some very central male mug shots can be extremely powerful.

Second problem is… because you eventually disguard the rule, most photographers now hate the rule. Why? One reason is a photo that breaks this rule can sometimes be a lot more powerful than one that obides by it. But more importantly… it’s a rule… and photographers hate rules! Me included!

To all you budding photographers… heed this advice
Learn every rule. Then learn how to break every rule. Then forget about the rule. The rules are solely there to guide you towards better compositions, better framing, and ultimately better photographs.

This was inspired by a weekly theme which was speed. Now when you say speed, I put my money on it that first thing you think of is traffic. I find it crazy how fast people drive these days, including busses. Some of the drivers on my work route are some crazy ass drivers. Sometimes I wonder is it because I’m a bad passenger or are they actually lunatic drivers. You see, about 8 years ago I broke my arm in a car accident, and I’ve been a rubbish passenger since. I’m not sure if you’ve seen that seatbelt add “they say the guy without the seatbelt did the damage”? Well he sometimes does! I was the front seat passenger on our way home from a nighttclub, and I was the only person with a seatbelt on in the car. Another mate of mine and his girlfriend of the time were in the back. My mate starts rimming it home, but me being drunk and half way through a tasty burger didn’t really notice. He goes over the brow of a hill, hits some loose chippings, and slightly loses control of the car. Some unfortunate lady drives around the bend towards us, with her kid in the back seat, and we hit her head on. Guy in the back with no seatbelt continues his journey through the 2 front seats, through my arm and smashes the bone in 2. He continued his journey though, hit’s the front windscreen, but luckily comes back off it, not through it. I didn’t feel it at the time, all I can remember is how loud the bang was. It was the loudest bang I’ve ever heard in my life! When my hearing returned it was pure silence, then I heard the girl in the back crying in panic. My mate is groaning between the 2 seats. Driver is slumped over the steering wheel, I was sure he was dead. “I need to call a f***k**g ambulance!”. Go to undo my seatbelt… “OW!”. Use my left hand instead. Take my mobile phone out… it’s dead. I don’t know what to do, my arm is litterally buggered, I thought it was a dislocated shoulder. So I think to myself, I gotta put this back in place or I won’t be able to help anyone. I get out of the car, lie on the ground, press my shoulder…. Second OW!… it’s broken, not dislocated! Tried to get up… but unfortunately by now the pain has started to kick in so I can feel how sore it is… and now I can’t move. So here’s me lying on the side of a road, 3 people in a car, 1 not moving, and god knows what’s going on in the other car. Eventually a bus comes by and sees the accident, so stop to help… and I find out that thankfully everyone survived it.

Woman in the other car broke a couple of bones, 1 in her leg. The kid thankfully came out pretty unscathed. Both recovered pretty quickly. Driver in our car broke a bone in his forearm. Girl in the back seat got a bad gash on her face. Back seat supermans damage included a sore back and a slight headache. They all recovered pretty quickly too. I came out with a broken humerus, 2 operations, 1 to insert a bar through the middle of the bone, and 1 to take it back out again, 8 months of physio because of deteriorated muscles and a loss of about 25% movement as a result of a slightly misaligned bone repair, so somehow managed to come out the worst… But I couldn’t care less. We all survived. I thank all our lucky stars since that day that each and everyone of us came out the right side of that accident, sure, with a few war wounds, but alive and well.

Net result: the guy without the seatbelt does the damage