52 Frames: Rule of Thirds

For some reason (hmm….), I’m a bit behind on blog posts so I’ll be catching up for a while. This one covers a recent 52 Frames challenge for the Rule of Thirds. If you don’t know what that is, here’s a really basic description: when you look at a scene, try to divide it into thirds horizontally and vertically. Then put the most interesting stuff where the lines intersect and that makes a more pleasing photograph. Like this:

A lot of cameras offer the “rule of thirds” setting so that when you look through the viewfinder, you see the grid and that makes it easier to compose a better image. Even my iPhone XS offers this setting.

I was traveling in New Mexico during this challenge and remembered the old windmill at City of Rocks State Park. After getting settled into my one-night-stand campsite, I had just enough light left to hustle down the road and get to work on my rule of thirds photo.

The first effort worked OK, but the rocks didn’t come out as cool as they looked in my mind’s eye when I was taking the shot and somehow, my brain didn’t see how jarring that water tower was from this angle. I walked down the road past the windmill and shot from the other direction.

It was definitely better, but even looking at it in camera, my eye was going back and forth between windmill and clouds. Too much going on. I waited for the light to keep changing as the sun slid towards the horizon, and the clouds changed too.

So this was my entry for the week, and I really like how it turned out. Some post-processing in Lightroom but no cropping since, to me, that would not be in the spirit of this particular challenge.

I do love windmills since they remind me of my grandfather. He met my grandmother on a farm in New Mexico, not that far from here, and the only photo I have of that place has a windmill in it.

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May you have a strong foundation when the winds of change shift…

Bob Dylan