I just saw this and agree that The Rule of Thirds provides a balanced and appealing layout for a photo.
But there are times you want to intentionally provide tension and conflict and would violate this “rule”.
Do you agree? Does anyone have good examples of this?
Someone once said, “a great photo breaks all the rules”. Some good examples of this here.
Same with design. Rules are made to be broken. Sometimes we need to step outside the box and experiment with unconventional techniques, to create something truly groundbreaking and innovational.
They’re more like guidelines. 
I think everyone has their style, if you find yours and it goes against the status quo, oh well, keep with it, and dare to be unique!
Photo composition is an art and what makes a good composition is largely subjective. But the Rule of Thirds is just one of several “guide lines”, as someone else posted, to help draw the viewer’s eyes to the subject you want to highlight. For example, you could take just a stock standard centred, straight on view photo of a statue in a park somewhere. If that is what you want, that’s fine. But if you want to try to create a more interesting image of the statue you might try taking photos of the statue from different angles, eg. from near ground level looking up at the statue from say about a 45deg angle or whatever. Photography is an art, not a science with hard and fast rigid rules.
When you know the rules then you know when you have to follow them… and when you can to break them! 
It really depends on how you look at it, I guess.
I do a lot of art that turns our fairly well and I don’t use the Rule of Thirds.
It’s preference.
As long as nothing is centered or chopped off weird where you can’t see what the object/subject is,
I think it would be fine.
Keep the eye moving and use odd numbers of point of interests.
Photos are photos and they were taken a certain way.
If the point and emotion behind the image is evocked properly, I think it’s fine
no matter what the rules are.
Art is expression.
That is the most interesting point of it all; Human Nature.
There seems to be an instinctive nature about the way the human brain interprets things we percieve. Symmetry and balance are favored by our natural inclination to recognize ‘patterns’ in all things*.
There has been some very interesting [recent] research that demonstrates the fact that we even CREATE patterns where there are none.
And for that reason, ODD always seems more interesting than even.
*A truly fascinating book, which I highly recommend, is The Drunkard’s Walk. It explores and explains this in a very easily digestible manner.
[ot] The other night I watched a new series pilot called “Touch” and it exactly made ParkinT’s point on how nature itself shows symmetry and balance in the curve of a wave, the spiral of a seashell, the sections of a pineapple and went on to say that it’s all connected, which is something I have believed for most of my life. Snow flakes are also symmetrical… each one, though different in design from the next, has six sides.
I also agree that we create patterns where there are none. For instance, we “see” recognizable objects in clouds. I once had a bathroom tile that, when you looked at it long enough, you could see faces in the pattern. Sort of creeped me out – all those eyes staring at me! In another instance we “see” recognizable objects in clouds.
It begs the question… are there patterns in everything and we normally just turn a blind eye to them? [/ot]
You have just touched on the philosophical aspect of Chaos Theory!! Nothing in the Universe is truly [i]random[/i]. The digits in [URL=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_approximation”]PI repeat at some point; we simply have not discerned the value far enough to see it.
i call bs on this claim
unless you can provide a reference, of course
ah… we should have been on the lookout for the binaric man! He’s a mathematical genius! :teach:
But Rudy… never is a long, long time! (or line if you’re talking about PI)
Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. But since the value of pi has an infinite number of decimal places then we will never know one way or the other with total certainty.
I agree with Meldin, photography is an art and each has his/her point of view whether as photographer or viewer. Additionally, the ever growing use of smartphones and designated apps contributes to the way we interpret photography today,
Stacey
Yeah ParkinT am totally agreed with you. This picture really shows that the rule of third provide a balanced and appealing lay out. Good to see this pic.
Violating the rule of thirds gives a different perspective and should be considered as an option
A nice quote I heard lately:
“Everyone is unique, except me.”
not sure where this should have been posted, but “rule of thirds” seems like a good choice, seeing as how there are three people in the picture, haha
http://rudy.ca/toronto/tina-remon-rudy.jpg
that’s @ScallioXTX and his lovely lady Tina with me yesterday in toronto
bottom-of-the-line $69 Canon point-and-shoot digital camera, auto focus/exposure, auto flash, 10-second delay timer so i could run around and get in the picture…