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

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.