The recipe #51 Golden Ratio

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Ben, sorry to being the poo poo'er on everyone's entries, but so far I haven't seen any that fit the Golden Ratio. I don't think this does either.

The spiral is just going through empty water, the purpose of the spiral is to show where the viewers eyes will travel when looking at the image. When I see your excellent bird image here, I see the bird, I do start at the head like you have as a starting point. But instead of my eyes traveling along the spiral path, my eyes go along the body of the bird towards it's tail.

Maybe @Ken Rennie can help with some insight to the Golden Ratio? I don't know if he has any experience with it. Or if someone else has been using the Golden Ratio, it would be great to get some more feedback and insight. Maybe @Bob also might be familiar with it?
 

Ken Rennie

Well-Known Member
Ben, sorry to being the poo poo'er on everyone's entries, but so far I haven't seen any that fit the Golden Ratio. I don't think this does either.

The spiral is just going through empty water, the purpose of the spiral is to show where the viewers eyes will travel when looking at the image. When I see your excellent bird image here, I see the bird, I do start at the head like you have as a starting point. But instead of my eyes traveling along the spiral path, my eyes go along the body of the bird towards it's tail.

Maybe @Ken Rennie can help with some insight to the Golden Ratio? I don't know if he has any experience with it. Or if someone else has been using the Golden Ratio, it would be great to get some more feedback and insight. Maybe @Bob also might be familiar with it?
Jim I may well be the last person you should ask about the golden ratio. As a Mathematician I understand what it is and can work with it but now I do not use it at all for 2 reasons. Firstly I think that it is bunk, many more beautiful things do not fit into it than do. Designing or photographing things that fit into spirals is no guarantee of beauty. Secondly, in the field, I often can't get my horizon level never mind placing objects on "power points". I have only 2 things that I think about when composing, do I want the main focus in the middle? If not why not? Do I want the horizon in the middle? The last is something that I often leave until later as I take a lot of panoramas with the camera absolutely level meaning to crop afterwards. Interestingly my first DSLR, an Olympus E410, had a live view grid overlay using golden sections. I could be completely wrong but as a guide to better composition it is far too complex for me. I mentioned earlier that I no longer used golden ratios but I used to. When I went back to photography, about 15 years ago. I joined a camera club and entered competitions and met with no success. I read avidly and came across golden sections and started processing my images using them, even moving objects to place them at the end of spirals. I got really good at cloning but achieved no more success as the fact that my images weren't very good had failed to register. For me landscape photography needs to be tackled holistically and not by the application of a set of rules. Ken
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Jim I may well be the last person you should ask about the golden ratio. As a Mathematician I understand what it is and can work with it but now I do not use it at all for 2 reasons. Firstly I think that it is bunk, many more beautiful things do not fit into it than do. Designing or photographing things that fit into spirals is no guarantee of beauty. Secondly, in the field, I often can't get my horizon level never mind placing objects on "power points". I have only 2 things that I think about when composing, do I want the main focus in the middle? If not why not? Do I want the horizon in the middle? The last is something that I often leave until later as I take a lot of panoramas with the camera absolutely level meaning to crop afterwards. Interestingly my first DSLR, an Olympus E410, had a live view grid overlay using golden sections. I could be completely wrong but as a guide to better composition it is far too complex for me. I mentioned earlier that I no longer used golden ratios but I used to. When I went back to photography, about 15 years ago. I joined a camera club and entered competitions and met with no success. I read avidly and came across golden sections and started processing my images using them, even moving objects to place them at the end of spirals. I got really good at cloning but achieved no more success as the fact that my images weren't very good had failed to register. For me landscape photography needs to be tackled holistically and not by the application of a set of rules. Ken
Thanks for the backstory Ken. I would agree with your assessment of it.

Since you have had some experience then with the Golden Ratio, and for me at least this week is turning more into a learning process, would you say any of the 3 entries so far meet the criteria for the Golden Ratio? Am I off base in thinking that the photos by Ben, Alan and Jameel are not following the spiral aspect of the Golden Rario? Or do they, and I am not seeing it?

Thanks for indulging my curiosity.
 

Ben Egbert

Forum Helper
Staff member
Jim, as you see, I used the end point of the spiral to place the eye, just as I would with the rule of thirds and in fact not much different than had I used the ROT. If the entire spiral is supposed to have elements, then I am hard pressed to say I have ever seen anything in nature that would conform. I think this rule has more application in architecture or maybe formal art where the artist can construct elements at will.

I have sort of the same idea about ROT. When I see something of interest, it's in the dead center of my vision, not off to one side. And most time the horizon is dead center. So I put them off center just because I got tired of hearing "it's too centered? not because I saw any improvement.
 

Jameel Hyder

Moderator
Staff member
As I wrote on the other thread the spiral is a geometric represent of the Fibonacci series which converges to the golden ratio. None of classic examples of the golden ratio I have seen has anything to do with the spiral and all to do with the placement of the subject.

in any case it’s good to see a healthy discussion on this subject. And that’s a positive in my book.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Jim, as you see, I used the end point of the spiral to place the eye, just as I would with the rule of thirds and in fact not much different than had I used the ROT. If the entire spiral is supposed to have elements, then I am hard pressed to say I have ever seen anything in nature that would conform. I think this rule has more application in architecture or maybe formal art where the artist can construct elements at will.

I have sort of the same idea about ROT. When I see something of interest, it's in the dead center of my vision, not off to one side. And most time the horizon is dead center. So I put them off center just because I got tired of hearing "it's too centered? not because I saw any improvement.
Ben, your end point is correct, the issue is nothing is along the spiral to pull the eye to end point.

The reason the spiral is there is supposed to be something, an object of some minor interest that will draw the eye away from the starting point and get it to the end point. The Spiral isn't there just to look pretty, its a path the eye is supposed to follow. In this photo you posted, the eye starts at the head and then goes along the body of the bird, not along the spiral path to the tail.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
Interesting discussion on this theme so far but not one really changes my approach to how I compose my frames. I fall into the camp that will be happy if my chosen comp happens to meet the criteria but I prefer to let the subject in front of me dictate the comp.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
As I wrote on the other thread the spiral is a geometric represent of the Fibonacci series which converges to the golden ratio. None of classic examples of the golden ratio I have seen has anything to do with the spiral and all to do with the placement of the subject.

in any case it’s good to see a healthy discussion on this subject. And that’s a positive in my book.
I think it's great to have a discussion like this Jameel. It makes us all think more about compositions, and that's a huge positive.

Maybe I have seen different examples, the ones I have seen the Spiral is a path that leads the eye from start to finish.

As I mentioned to Ben, the Spiral isn't just there to be pretty, the purpose of the spiral is to be a path that the eye follows from the starting point. There is supposed to be a minor element or elements along that spiral path to pull the eye to the end point.

It's like we often talk in our Landscape photos about leading lines. We do want our eyes to start somewhere in a photo, usually in the foreground and then follow the leading line(s) to the background. Pretty simple. With the Golden Ratio, those leading lines are now supposed to follow that spiral path.
 
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