Diagonal Method

The diagonal method (DM ) is a composition rule in photography, the art of painting and the art of drawing. The Dutch photographer and teacher Edwin Westhoff came up with this method, when he performed visual experiments to investigate why the rule of thirds is so inaccurate. After he had examined many photos, paintings and engravings, he came to the discovery that the strong points rather lie on the diagonal line of a square. A photograph is usually a rectangular image with dimensions of 4:3 or 3:2, where one should focus on the four corners of the bisector. The image seems to more pleasant if certain elements of these lines run.

Theory

The strong points are located according to the DM often up to a millimeter to one of the diagonal lines of 45 degrees from one of the four corners of the image. In contrast to the other rules of composition, such as the rule of thirds and the golden ratio, the DM hardly attaches importance to the points where the lines intersect and allows a strong point located at an arbitrary position on the diagonal line. As long as the details are on the lines, they draw attention to themselves. However, the DM requires well that the strong points are very accurately positioned on the diagonal line, with a maximum deviation of one millimeter to A4 size. Unlike the rest of the composition rules DM is not applied to improve the composition.

Application

The DM is the result of an analysis of the way in which artists compose details emotionally and can be used to also. So Westhoff discovered that you can see which details the attention of the artist directed, if you draw the lines under a corner of 45 ° from the corners of an image. Artists and photographers position the strong points emotionally in a composition. With the DM can pursue you, wanted to emphasize the particulars of the author of the image, the painting or engraving separately. From the investigation of Westhoff showed for example, that important details in the paintings and etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn precisely located on the diagonal lines. Are you talking about eyes, hands or utensils.

Furthermore, the DM is also used as a method when Beischneiden own works. Since 2007 Photoshop Lightroom contains to an auxiliary program to follow up pictures after DM addition to applications for other rules of composition. Since 2009 Scripts are available for Photoshop (by Golden Crop ), Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, and Picture Window Pro. It is extremely difficult to position during photography or painting the strong points exactly on the diagonal lines. This can, however, do very well during the post-processing. For example, the main subject by means of DM be repositioned into one of the corners.

The DM is applicable only on images that want to highlight or emphasize certain details, such as a portrait, in which deserves a little more attention, a certain body part. Or an advertising image, which a product is to be presented. On some landscapes as important details are visible, as people ( single) trees and buildings that can be located on the diagonal lines. But usually it's in landscape pictures or pictures of buildings at the overall picture, often with other lines define the screen layout, such as the horizon.

Foundation

It is generally known that the diagonal lines - as well as the medium vertical lines, the priorities and the corners - are among the lines of force of a square and are considered stronger than all other parts of the quadrangle. To what extent these findings can be transferred to rectangles, such as on images with aspect ratios of 4:3 and 3:2, has not been examined to date. Besides the practical confirmation of the DM through the various analyzes are for the time being no scientific tests that can confirm the DM and theoretically.