From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Rule of threes

Rule of threes

From the course: Photography Foundations: Composition

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Rule of threes

Have you ever noticed that it's always a priest, a rabbi and a nun that are walking into a bar together in a joke? Or a doctor, a lawyer and a penguin that are fighting over the last parachute on an airplane? It's never just a mountain lion and a rabbit that are going fishing together. It's always three things and that's because three is a kind of important number. One of something is just its own thing, two of something is maybe a coincidence, three is an actual pattern. Once you hit three, we begin to see some significance, we begin to apply some meaning to something. Not necessarily deep spiritual meaning, but simply, oh, there is a system here. I got three big refrigerators here. Three often works very well in composition. If I only had two refrigerators, believe it or not, this wouldn't be as interesting. So a lot of times when you're working with repetition, when you're working with patterns, you want to be thinking at least in threes. A great thing about three is it's not too…

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