Rule of Thirds made easy

where is your attention going looking at this pic?

if you answer “straight to her eye” you are on the right track.
Since when I started with photography in 1988 with my first Praktica camera I’ve always been obsessed with a couple of things: the Ansel Adam’s Zone System and the Rule of Thirds.
At the beginning to my point of view it was a rule for me, today it’s just the way my eyes see the world.
Please note that there’s nothing in everything like art, photography included, that we must maintain with unique rules that we all must follow. If you take photography in this way, you are far away from inspiration and creativity.
That said, I must admit that the rule of thirds was in my brain, or even better in my eyes, giving me a better understanding of the perception I see the world around me, long time before I knew about it.
I just gave this stuff a name and a reason.
Yes, the most part of the images where the attention goes exactly (or very close) where the lines intersect giving life to the rule of thirds, those are the images catching the majority of the attention from the viewers.
The funny side of the story is that someone tried to give it an explanation.
My answer is a smile a huge one, because it’s just the way we see the world together with the visual weight of the images.
Nothing magic, it’s just the way our eyes catch whatever is around us when we put it in a frame or a slide.
Everybody taking pictures starts really soon looking at the world around divided in thirds before any single picture will be taken.
Nothing nerdy, even less magical, nothing difficult, it’s just the way we elaborate what we see using our eyes and we process that vision inside our brain.

Now, like whatever in photography, there’s not a must to follow this rules.
It’s just a way to better understand and learn about photography and the way we elaborate images though photography.
It’s part of the artistic and creative process, but it’s not part of our inspiration.