I remember my art teacher attempting to explain ‘The Rule of Thirds’ to me when I was about 14. When I got my first camera, I tried to follow this practice – placing the point of interest to one side of the frame… but I didn’t like any of the photographs, they just didn’t feel right. For a while I honestly believed that this rule, this Golden Section as it is known in the art world, was an actual real rule, like a law… so I decided to break it.
I take photographs of the things that catch my eye, and when I look at something I don’t look at it out of the corner of my eye – I look at it head-on, in the middle. This is also why, generally, I compose my portraits with the subject in the middle of the frame… that’s how I look at people, and more importantly, that’s how I talk to people.
I also obsess about symmetry – an affliction my 15 year-old daughter has inherited. I see symmetry everywhere – but what I like to photograph is the slightly imperfect, the not quite symmetrical.
All the images here were made with Pentax 67 and Fuji GW690III medium format cameras – which, funnily enough, are in themselves symmetrical. Film is Kodak Portra 400…. and Kodak is almost a symmetrical word.
Images developed and scanned at UK FILM LAB
Phil Kneen 
Leave a reply to chiefwallflower Cancel reply