Today i'm going to talk about the golden spiral and why i think it's a load of
first of all before arbitrarily using this overlay on your images after reading an article
on the golden spiral it's good to know the history behind it the greek mathematician euclid
back around about 300 bc first described it as the division extreme and mean ratio my name is euclid
and i rock at math he came to the conclusion that if you draw a line and break it into two parts if
the ratio between those two parts is the same as the ratio between the overall length and the
larger part the parts are said to be in the golden ratio that's right this is also closely related to
the fibonacci sequence which is said to date back to the time of pingala which was around about 450
to 200 bc pingala was the ancient indian author of the chanda ahastra also called pingala sutras
now if i pronounced any of those words badly i do apologize the fibonacci sequence is basically
a series of numbers where every number is made up by adding the previous two numbers together
now by taking the ratio of successive fibonacci numbers you can get closer and closer to the
golden ratio now from 300 bc right through until around about the 1500s was all a little bit quiet
until the italian renaissance and this is where the golden ratio started to get its notoriety
mathematician luca pacquiaoli wrote a book called de divina proporcioni which basically means the
divine proportion and he wrote that in 1509. check out all of my math gadgets i'm away you're cooler
than you khalid tachioli used drawings by leonardo da vinci that incorporated the golden ratio and it
is possible that da vinci was the first to call it secto auera or the golden section now in the
1800s the american mathematician mark barr used the greek letter phi to represent this number
i'm raising the bar now on top of that there are two things that are said to be related to the
golden ratio which are the golden rectangle and the golden spiral these are basically graphical
representations of this golden ratio for the golden rectangle take a perfect square and divide
its width and height by 1.618 then do the same with a smaller square and the same again with a
smaller square again and so on and so forth if you continue this process you'll end up with a
rectangle whose proportions are said to be the most pleasing and balanced this is basically
not far off the size of your hd or 4k tv not quite the same but almost now the golden spiral can then
be created by drawing a quarter circle in each of these squares getting tighter and tighter as the
squares get smaller everything from the pyramid to the greek parthenon are said to have used
phi in the design with a golden ratio being used to work out the length and height of those said
structures the problem is that a lot of the time these are approximations or if it's close enough
it's considered to be the golden ratio so instead of being perfectly fitting it's around about right
now this sounds a little bit like my approach to pretty much everything but that's a different
story now i've read quite a few articles defending this approximation but this is using maths and in
maths an approximation is akin to getting it wrong if i said 4x4 was around about 15 i'd be wrong
with the human body as well there are a lot of different lengths that are said to follow the
golden ratio say for instance if i take a line from my butt to my chin and then a line from my
chin to my belly button the ratio between these two is 1.6 or around about the same as a golden
ratio but the human skeletal system is made up of so many different lengths of structure
you will always find certain measurements that will fall into the golden ratio or thereabouts
and it's the same in nature pine cones are said to follow the golden ratio as a young fern branches
however in nature there are as many things that don't follow the golden ratio as there are that do
the marine mollusk nautilus bellowensis commonly known as the nautilus is said to follow the golden
ratio and can be seen if you cut the shell in half however this is actually a logarithmic
spiral which means it turns by a constant angle along its length this is not the golden ratio
even though it might look quite similar and this is the main problem we as humans want to find
order in chaos we want to find patterns even when there aren't any and close enough seems to be the
norm for the golden spiral now back to photography this attitude of close enough seems to fit pretty
much every example i've ever seen of people trying to relate the golden spiral to their photography
just do a google search on the golden spiral in photography and you will find hundreds of
images with a golden spiral laid over the top of them and most of the time they've just put
an element of the photograph or part of their subject on the tightest part of the spiral
or near where that spiral tightens with no other relation to the spiral whatsoever even shots of
spiraling staircases don't fit it perfectly and it is a case of well it's close enough so
that'll do so whether you place the golden spiral over a rose a nautilus shell a hurricane or a wave
or any kind of photo for that matter sometimes it'll be quite close but it'll never really fit
that well one thing i think that this does denote is a kind of hierarchical class system where
people who think they're using the golden spiral to get better photos are just kind of lavishing in
belief perseverance they must be better as they're connected intrinsically to the masters of art
and even leonardo da vinci himself and therefore they're definitely not a novice or a beginner and
this is why i think the golden spiral is bull i say if you're a beginner ignore any article you
see on the golden spiral and concentrate more on crafting your art the rule of thirds is
wrongly named and shunned by those people who think they have found the divine proportions
ignore those people the rule of thirds or the guide of thirds as i like to call it is actually
such a handy overlay to have and you can use it to break the rules as well if your subject is looking
one way you can use it to place them on one of the vertical lines to give them kind of a looking room
or you can place their eyes on the intersections between the lines but you don't have to
if you want to place your subject in the middle of the frame the grid can help you get your subject
closer to the middle of that frame and you can even use those horizontals to get a nice
flat horizon you can place it in the center you can place it at the top you can place it at the
bottom of your frame pretty much wherever you want you can kind of use it as a guide to make or break
those rules like i've already said in nature as many things don't follow the golden ratio
as do follow it in photography it seems more don't follow it than do follow it and this is the point
i'm trying to make it is a chaotic world so just go out and photograph it and don't worry whether
you follow or break the rules and if anyone talks to you about using the golden spiral or they're
trying to force their beliefs onto you just back away and leave the conversation as quickly as
possible now these are just my rambling thoughts and i'm kind of having a little bit of fun with it
and i'm probably completely full of it as well but it is one of those things that makes me chuckle
it kind of just doesn't work for me now what do you think have you come across the golden spiral
is it something you use or do you think that it's kind of a way of looking too deeply into the
process of photography let me know in the comments below it'll be great to hear your thoughts and
try not to get too nasty now if you want to learn more about composition where i probably contradict
everything i've just said in this video click on this one next and if you haven't already
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