You probably know that grids are useful tools for composing your photos, but did you know that you can also use them to break the rules and create more creative and original photos? In this article, you will learn how to use grids to challenge the conventional wisdom of photography and experiment with different perspectives, angles, and effects.
Grids are lines that divide your frame into equal or proportional sections, such as thirds, quarters, or squares. They help you align your subjects and elements along the lines or intersections, creating balance, harmony, and visual interest. Most cameras and smartphones have a grid option that you can turn on or off in the settings.
While grids are helpful for following the basic rules of composition, such as the rule of thirds, the golden ratio, or the diagonal method, they can also limit your creativity and originality. Sometimes, breaking the rules can result in more dynamic, unexpected, and expressive photos that capture your vision and style. For example, you can use grids to create tension, contrast, asymmetry, or negative space that draw attention and evoke emotions.
Grids can be used to break the rules and create more creative and original photos. You can place your subject off-center or at the edge of the frame, align it with the corners or center of the frame, crop it partially or completely, tilt your camera or rotate your frame, and overlap or intersect your subjects and elements. Doing so can create a sense of movement, direction, isolation, stability, symmetry, focus, mystery, curiosity, abstraction, imbalance, distortion, dynamism, depth, complexity and interaction.
To challenge your creativity and perspective, practice breaking the rules with grids. Select a grid option on your camera or smartphone, such as thirds, quarters, or squares. Then, choose a subject or a scene to photograph, such as a person, an object, a landscape, or a street. Take 10 photos of the same subject or scene using the grid to break the rules in different ways. For example, you can use the grid to place your subject in different positions, angles, or distances; crop, tilt, or overlap your subject with other elements. Afterward, review your photos and consider how breaking the rules with grids impacted your composition, mood, and message.
Breaking the rules with grids is a great way to improve your skills and develop your style as a photographer. Before you start, it’s important to understand the basic principles of composition and how grids work. Experiment with diverse grid options and subjects. Don’t be afraid to try different combinations and see how they change your photos and what they communicate. Additionally, it can be helpful to get feedback from other photographers and look at other photos that use grids to break the rules. Analyze what they do and how they make you feel.
After you've broken this object into thirds, you need to decide what story you want to tell about it because putting your focal thing on one side or the other lets you see the direction they're thinking of going or where it came from. A still image has a story; framing the shot sets the intention of the character being photographed. If the grid limits what objects you can capture in your frame that are essential to your story, then ignore the grid.