rule of thirds

first, take three cats ...

No, that's not quite right. I was trying to explain the rule of thirds in visual composition earlier today (one going back to at least 1797 as a prescription for landscape imaging - divide your screen/canvas into three equal parts horizontally, three equal parts vertically, and try and make sure that everything that you want to draw attention to comes at one of the intersections - and, if possible, think of yourself as filling the space with, say, one thirds land, two thirds sky...). Of course, this works - not least because, conventionally, we're used to seeing and admiring so very many compositions that have been made, consciously or otherwise, using these very proportions. Our eye gets used to the pleasure that they give in a visual artifact.

But. The eye may also get bored with the predicable. I was writing out a version of this, and immediately and typically started to feel contrarian - not just towards the rule of three, but towards the very conventionality of the rectangular box (viewers of this blog will know that in any case, I often favor the square, or sometimes a tall or a long angulated space). So... luckily (from the top) Emmett, Lola, and LucyFur were crammed together in a kitty bed, hoping that maybe the radiator just by it might get turned on sometime soon. Of course, their heads are, like it or not, bisecting the circle, in thirds...