Composition and Fibonacci

This book is by David Prakel and from the library, I'm really enjoying it. It includes the basic rules of composition, including viewpoint, perspective and scale; the formal elements, such as point, line, shape, form, texture, pattern, tone, and colour; how to organise space using frames, balance and space.

The chapter on the Golden Section and Fibonacci (Leonado of Pisa) a twelth century mathmatician was particularly well explained.

He discovered a remarkable series of numbers starting with 0 and 1 adding the two previous numbers gives the next number hence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 etc. The ratio of each successive pair is 1.6 and this approximates to the Golden Number 1.618034 identified by the Greek letter Phi.

Spirals based on the 'Fibonacci Sequence' are found in sea shells, seed distribution in sunflower heads, plant growth and even the proportions of our body. It complies with our sense of harmony and proportion. The Parthanon is Greece is based around these proportions.


So I thought I'd have ago at drawing the spiral, starting with 1cm squares and adding the curve.

Drawing it on tracing paper so that I could use it as an overlay it made a very pleasing curve as predicted. Then it occurred to me to use it on one of my photos from the studio shoot with Saffy and Paul that I'd been trying different crops with.

I think this will be a helpful tool, especially if I could load it as a layer in Photoshop. I'd not have tried this crop without it but it seems to work in this case.