Does the composition of landscape photographs affect visual preferences? The rule of the Golden Section and the position of the horizon

This study considers the effect of aspects of the composition of a photograph of a landscape scene on its overall perceived beauty. The study has confirmed that the composition of landscape photographs according to the Golden Section, or the Rule of Thirds, and the position of the horizon in the photograph significantly influence the perceived beauty of the depicted landscape scenes.Moreover, we have found that placing positively perceived landscape elements at the intersection points of a grid based on the Rule of Thirds significantly increases positive evaluations of entire landscape scenes, while placing negatively perceived landscape elements according to the same rules makes negative evaluations more negative. Our finding about negative evaluations is innovative: this phenomenon has not been demonstrated by previous research. Our findings point to some possible pitfalls of photograph-based studies on visual preferences which do not consider the composition of individual pictures.

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