The History of The Rule of Thirds
Years ago I read the book The Eight by Katherine Neville. It’s a thriller, suspense and historical fiction novel thrown into one. This book introduced me to Fibonacci and proof, via a sequence of numbers present in everything, that there’s order to life.
There’s a sequence of numbers written into humanity, nature and even the universe itself. You are hard-wired to love things that adhere to it. Great art, music, architecture and other creations echo the sequence whether or not intentional.
It doesn’t sound real, does it? I find the background is spine-tingling, a bit eerie and fascinating. But it’s definitely true.
Fibo-What?
The rule of thirds, which I’ll explain momentarily, is based on the Fibonacci Sequence, also known as The Golden Mean, Golden Section, Golden Ratio and a plethora of other Golden terms.
Leonardo Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician living in the Middle Ages. He popularized the Arabic numeral system in Europe, which is the basis of the 0-9 numeric and decimal system we use today.
He also posed and solved an idealized puzzle involving the growth of a rabbit population. If one male and one female are left in a field to reproduce, how many pairs of rabbits are in the field by the end of the year? The answer lies in a sequence of numbers where the previous two numbers add up to the next:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 and so on.
Math blahbity blah! I know you didn’t come here to break out your compass and protractor. Here’s how it ties into art and photography specifically:
Look at this sequence drawn out below. The small center is the start of the sequence and it spirals outward exponentially as the sequence advances.
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Originally published at Daily Window {Photography. Photo Editing. Inspiration.}. You can comment here or there.