To be (on the left) or not to be

The Expert Critique section in the October issue of Digital DSLR Photography gave a rather harsh review to what was, in fairness, a rather boring image. One of the more interesting criticisms of the image, from Lee Frost, was that the subject had been placed on the left hand side of the frame which, as many photographers will know, is 'wrong' in the loosest sense of the word. The reason for this is that people will tend to scan the image from left to right and it is better for the eye to have something to aim for rather than scan a boring expanse after briefly looking at the subject. There are many exceptions to this rule but for a basic still life it makes sense to follow it.

This led me to thinking about the reason we view images from left to right and after mulling it over for a couple of days it occurred to me that we read from left to right! Eureka! Okay so that occurred to me in a couple of seconds and is not particularly interesting at all...so far so boring. However, what did strike me as interesting is that only the some of the world read from left to right; Arabic, Hebrew and a variety of Asian languages are not read from left to right but from right to left or even top to bottom, therefore, it is worth thinking about who will be viewing/buying your images when you compose them so that you strike a chord with your audience.

There are surprisingly few articles that make a big deal about this so I may research it further and add it as a separate post. Above I have added an example of an example of an image where I wish I had composed it with the subject on the left as I think it looks better for the squirrel to be running "into the frame". I also wish I had focused it a bit better...oh well.