How to Enable the Camera Grid on Your iPhone to Apply the Rule of Thirds

The great camera on the iPhone means you can easily take good pictures, but by turning on the camera grid you can use the rule of thirds to take great pictures every time!

A quick summary of the rule of thirds:

The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections.
Source: Wikipedia

It sounds simple enough — and it is as long as you have the lines. Thankfully, enabling this is an easy task on your iPhone.

In Settings, scroll down and tap Camera, and then enable the Grid option. That’s all you have to do to turn the feature on! Your next step is to apply the concept: remember to put important things along the lines.

Here’s a simple example taken from a plane window:

These two examples show how you can use just the horizontal line to improve a photo. The first draws your attention to the sky by having that be the two thirds at the top, whereas the second draws your eye to the clouds.

This image is of one of the old fashioned trams in Vienna, where I’ve lined up the tram across the bottom and right-most third lines.

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