The Magic 7 in Photographic Composition

To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t any cameras you can program to display “Magic 7” grid lines onto their viewfinders and LCDs. You can program your camera to display Rule of Thirds, Square, and Square Grid + Diagonal-based grid line patterns, but nobody does the Magic 7 grid.

The slats woven through the fence links form repeat patterns of 7s.

You also won’t find grids for Vanishing Points or Converging Lines, despite the fact they are compositional aids that evoke movement, direction, and visual tension—the very shapes and forms that suck you into the picture’s story line.

It’s not that they aren’t considered important; if anything, they’re the building blocks of visually dynamic image composition. The problem is that—unlike linear grid patterns made up of orderly horizontal and vertical lines—vanishing points, intersecting lines, and the Magic 7 are random and unpredictable, which makes them difficult, if not impossible, to plot and display in your camera’s viewfinder.

Regardless, intersecting lines are important visual tools when it comes to composing photographs.

What is the Magic 7?

Compositionally speaking, the Magic 7 is essentially a set of converging leading lines. The difference between converging lines that form a number 7 and converging lines in general is that the lines forming a 7 must intersect at an angle of less than 90°. Leading lines that converge at angles greater than 90° are no longer identifiable as the number seven.

 The Magic 7 abounds in this picture, throughout the building façade and the lines in the roadway.

Unless you make yourself consciously aware of them, you don’t always see number 7s hidden in the details, even though they are often basking in plain sight. One reason 7s often go unnoticed is because they’re often upside-down, backward, or running diagonally across your field of vision. If you’ve been shooting for a while, there’s a good chance you’re already incorporating these principals into your visual workflow.

Unlike converging lines, which play off our sense of gravity and directional sensibilities by leading our eyes to distant vanishing points, 7s can appear randomly and on a subliminal level. Your mind’s-eye sees them, even though you may not be consciously aware of it.

An interesting quality of the number 7 is that it invariably introduces diagonal lines and triangular forms into the picture, which automatically grab your eye and lead it through the image field.

In addition to a selection of original photographs I captured to accompany this text, I also rummaged through folders of pictures I captured randomly over the past few months, and I was astonished at how frequently 7s appeared in one form or another. Sometimes they were front and center, while in other photographs they were almost stealth-like in the way they guided my eyes across the image area.

A box of donuts says your own photographs are chock-full of 7s. If you don’t notice any at first glance, try turning the picture upside-down and sideways, and I’d bet you’ll hit the jackpot.