Message text written by INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Mike, I don't believe anybody has made these claims during this discussion. On the contrary, people have repeatedly pointed out the ambiguity in the word 'rule' and warned against misinterpreting it. But you've continued wilfully to misrepresent the position and set it up as a straw man just to knock it down.
--- Bob < and ignore the fact that any rule of thumb is designed with assumptions that are never stated. knowing when a rule of thumb doesn't apply is what experience is about and ignoring it, knowing when the assumptions aren't true and thereby "breaking the rule", to make a better picture. i just looked through some of my beginning photo books on the "rule of thirds". they basically say "when you don't know where to begin...". how many people here don't know where to begin? how can one teach composition if one can't say why an image is good or bad? "i know it when i see it" doesn't help any student. Galen Rowell made the observation that although there are many child prodigies in music, there has not yet been one in photography. he goes on to speculate why. his thesis was that there was an undefined element that comes only with experience relating to seeing what is worth photographing. this element was not innate and had to be trained by use and by feedback, without exception. feedback came by asking himself why he liked one image more than another. each time Rowell answered why ennunciated a rule of thumb. yet one can easily go through his work and find an image that did the opposite. rules of thumb are not absolutes and treating them as if they are is what Mike says is worthless. he's right, but saying that there are no absolutes is not the same thing as saying there are no rules of thumb. Herb...
