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Anonymous
"The rules of composition are important, but the idea is to learn them and then break them. You can't divide a picture down the middle? You can do anything if it works. Composition should become intuitive; I see now mostly in terms of color, form, light, and shadow."- William Albert Allard, interview in the "National Geographic Photography Field Guide," a rather middling "how to make your pictures of your kids not suck" photography textbook with a prestigious brand name that's worthwhile to own for the really instructive profiles of and interview-tip-sessions-with great photographers inserted into the book at different points.
Also, keep in mind: Cartier-Bresson was trained as a painter in a studio that emphasized classical rules within a modernist context. He left, after getting all that training, because he didn't want to get tied down to the rules. Then he went to Africa, picked up a camera, got sick, came home, and saw "Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika" and the rest is history.
"The rule of thirds" in and of itself is pretty much a good "how to make your pictures not suck" two-minute-lesson-thing. But once one internalizes composition, it pops up quite a bit without one even realizing it. Llots of great pictures composed intuitively end up with it anyway- one of the best shots I've done (I can't post it, personal obligations to one of the subjects) is vertical, with the top horizontal bar cutting right across one person's mouth and another's eyes, the bottom one cutting in half one of the latter's hand, the lefthand bar intersecting the same eye, and right hand one intersecting the eye of the guy whose mouth is intersected with the top bar. And it just happened to turn out that way.
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