The Rule of Thirds compositional guide is tailor-made for the “L” shape. I find that whenever I have a subject, the aerial dancer in this case, that is predominately shaped like a right angle that using the Rule of Thirds to align my subject is always a good starting place for evaluating composition.. Back a couple of articles, I used an example that was very similar, even though demonstrated with an inverted “L”. You can read about that here.
When I applied the actual crop to the in-camera framing, I found a little Crop Rotation helped in aligning the dancer to the Rule of Thirds guides. I was also more pleased with the rotation from a general compositional stand point as well. Many of the subjects we photograph have this right-angle “L” shape. Using the Rule of Thirds to mimic the “L” is always a good place to start-even if your final crop ends up being quite different.
Rikk Flohr © 2013
