The golden section - composition tips

Anyone who doesn't just want to press the shutter release but rather add their own creative input must put their mind to learning something about composition. Independently of technical picture quality - such as focus or colour quality - the sectioning of a motif, the creation of foreground and background and many other factors play a part in the reason why some pictures are more pleasing than others.

The arrangement of elements plays the most important role.

For example: The sunset is a vacation photography classic, whereby the picture is normally composed as follows: the horizon splits the picture horizontally in the centre, above it - also centred - the glowing red ball of that celestial body. Such photos are perhaps fine as a souvenir of our own memories but they are nothing but boring and meaningless to others.

Things become very different if both the horizon and the sun are taken away from the centre of the photo and the section is chosen in such a way that the horizon is about a third of the way up the picture and the sun is placed either to the left or the right on a line, which also marks one third of the picture. Why does this picture seem so much more harmonious and interesting even though it is clearly still the same motif?