Does AI understand the rule of thirds or the golden triangle?

(The quick answer is no).

One of the first things you will learn in art school, or a photography class, is composition. One doesn’t always have to follow the rules but quite often when the basics are not followed, everything else can fall apart. Simple things, like keeping your horizon lines straight, really do make a huge difference.

The Rule of Thirds

Many cameras have a viewing grid like a noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) board which divides the scene into 3 vertical and horizontal sections. Where those lines intersect is generally where you want the action to happen. The lines help you get things straight, aligned, balanced.

Midjourney’s best effort to visually explain the rule of thirds, in what might better be described as, the rule of quarters. Of all the extra lines it has added, the diagonal of the bird is the best touch. Horizon lines in AI are always straight but from experimentation, to date, AI likes centrality and symmetry. How to position subjects in order to create a good composition might prove a challenge going forward.

The Golden Triangle

This is not the Golden Triangle I was thinking of. (MidJourney)

The Golden Triangle is a more complicated composition structure where you divide your frame into four triangles. First you draw a diagonal from one corner to another, and then draw two lines from the other two corners which hit the main diagonal at 90 degree angles. If you have a square this will be the centre point giving 4 identical triangles but for a rectangular view the triangles will be of two different sizes. Once you have this in place you have two intersection points and strong angled lines for events to align and direct the viewers eye. One can also fill the triangles with different aspects of your creation, generally keeping the action in one triangle. The Golden Triangle is, in itself, a simplified version of the Golden Spiral which is created using Fibonacci’s golden ratio, commonly found in the perfection of nature, most famously in the cross-section of a nautilus shell.

DallE created this cross-section of a nautilus shell after repeated failed attempts on MidJourney and Stable Diffusion to create a staircase following the path of a golden spiral.

Composition

For a great video about the power and complexity of carefully constructed composition take a look at Evan Pushak’s (aka Nerdwriter) analysis of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch . For composition in photography look no further than the work of Ernst Hass.