Are Rules for Fools?
“Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” — Harry Day, World War Two airman.
Many of us will be familiar with at least a few of the so-called “rules of composition”: the rule of thirds (perhaps the most often cited), the rule of odds, and so on. An indefinitely long list of such rules seems to be pervasive as criteria in judging contexts, such as in competitions or in image critiques: moving subjects should be given space to move into, horizons should not be placed on the centre line, and so on. A violation of these rules is judged a “fault” in the image. To the various so-called rules of composition are added rules pertaining to other aspects of an image, for example: images should never clip whites or block up the shadows, they should express the full range of tones, flowing water should retain at least some detail, the main subject should be in sharp focus, blah, blah, blah.
At the same time it is a common refrain from many established photographers that “there are no rules in photography” or, as the eminent American photographer, Cole Thompson, pithily puts it: “Rules are for fools!”. So what gives? Are there rules in photography or not?
The answer hinges, as so many disputes do, on an ambiguity. The notion of a “rule” is used sometimes as a norm instructing us how we are to behave, and sometimes as a way of talking about a generalisation. Sometimes it is both. We see the same ambiguity in the notion of a “law”. Laws passed through legislative bodies are normative – they instruct us how we are (or are not) to behave. Laws of nature, on the other hand, are essentially descriptive – they are empirical generalisations drawn from experience. Understanding this distinction can help us understand how both sides of this debate can be correct, but in different senses of the phrase “rules of composition”.
If understood normatively, as an instruction, and given that we are here talking about photography as mode of art, Cole Thompson is surely correct. In art, no one can tell you that you can’t do this or must do that. In art there is no higher authority that what works. If you like it, or better yet, love it, no rule can tell you that you’ve got it wrong.
But this now leads us to a further question: are there any rules - in the descriptive sense - that characterize what people like or love? Given that we are talking about art, it’s tempting to suppose that there can’t be any such rules. Humans, after all, differ in their aesthetic judgments in a variety of ways. What “works” aesthetically for one person may not work aesthetically for another. Beauty, as the cliché goes, is in the eye of the beholder.
Okay, but what this truism neglects is the fact that underlying a vast array of subjective differences in how we aesthetically judge things, are a set of objective commonalities deeply rooted in our widely shared neurology. Our aesthetic judgments, for all their subjectivity, do not float entirely free of a set of broadly shared cognitive structures, many of which are hard-wired into our brains. For example, some colours complement and others contrast, and this is a function of the tri-chromatic nature our human visual systems. Likewise, all humans understand at an unconscious level that humans tend to move forwards, i.e., in the direction their faces or chests are oriented, not their backs. So when we see a photograph of a human apparently caught in the process of walking, say, we cannot help but expect them to move in a forward direction. This sets up a tendency in us to desire more space in the direction of their movement for them to move into. The image itself is static, of course, but our brains are intrinsically predictive engines that have evolved to make best sense of a dynamic world, and we are therefore cognitively primed to be more interested in the space a human is heading into than in the space behind them from which we instinctively suppose them to have emerged.
A similar point can be made with respect to repeating patterns. The human brain seeks patterns in our experience, such as repeating shapes or repeating rhythms. Why? Because patterns can be exploited to make successful predictions. Patterns are satisfying because they help us to predict what comes next, and for evolutionary reasons we like to know what comes next. For this reason, all else being equal, repeating structure is more pleasing than chaos. But too much structure can result in boredom. This is why a break in a pattern creates an immediate point of interest – a surprise that draws our attention. We pay attention to the things that we do not expect.
There are, therefore, genuine and objective “rules” – in the descriptive sense – of composition. That is, there are true generalisations about how humans tend to respond cognitively and aesthetically to elements and relationships within an image. But before we get carried away it is vital to note that these are simply generalisations - tendencies of a more or less rough sort. Any such rule has exceptions – sometimes lots of exceptions.
Given that rules will have exceptions, are these rules of any use? Yes, but they are probably most effective when used as aide memoires, and mostly for those beginning their photographic journey. They are akin to spelling rules that some of us may have learned: “i” before “e” except after “c”, and so on. It works most of the time. Do we strictly need such rules? No, not once we get good enough at spelling. The best spellers will know how to spell words from extensive experience and practice (lots of reading and writing) without having to consciously recite a spelling rule. Through that experience they learn to sense the exceptions when they arise.
Another example is chess. Analogous to the rules of composition are not the rules of the game (that’s more like the laws of the road — a rule in the normative sense), but the strategic principles that typically help in most positions to improve the chances of winning: don’t bring out your queen early, castle your king early, strive for control over the centre of the board, place rooks on open files, etc. Those “rules” are useful, especially for the beginner, but they will all have exceptions - exceptions to which the experienced player will have become more sensitive. The better players, having played thousands of games, learn to “feel” the right move intuitively without any conscious elaboration, but the rules, together with their exceptions, are still there, operating implicitly in the background.
The same is true for photographic compositions. Awareness of the rules of composition can remind us of what usually works, but in principle they are entirely superfluous – if we attend carefully to the compositional elements in an image; armed with ample experience, we can make good compositional choices without conscious regard to rules. Moreover, again as with chess, a slavish adherence to certain general principles will inevitably lead you to make some inferior moves in some positions. There are positions when castling early (or at all) is a bad idea, for instance, and similarly, a slavish adherence to the rule of thirds will inevitably lead you to make choices that weaken the composition rather than strengthen it.
It is for this reason that, in the normative sense of the term, Cole Thompson and others are right in claiming that “rules are for fools”. In this normative sense, rules oppose the very essence of art — as free and unconstrained self-expression. Photography, therefore, considered as a mode of artistic self-expression, cannot be bound by normative rules. For the beginner, though – as with strategic principles in chess – descriptive rules of composition have much utility and reflect objectively true, if inevitably imperfect generalisations about what tends to work aesthetically. As we develop and gain more experience and practice, we become increasingly sensitive to the exceptions to those rules which, if slavishly followed as a norm, will inevitably sometimes lead us astray. Ultimately, then, for the experienced photographer even descriptive rules of composition will likely become superfluous. One can argue that such rules are still, in some sense, operating at an implicit and unconscious level, albeit modified and qualified by extensive experience. But we can and ideally will reach a point where conscious consideration of rules of composition no longer plays a role in our aesthetic choices. When such a stage is reached we learn to trust ourselves when it just “feels” right.