Someone once said you must know all the rules in order to break them all properly. That's probably true in any field, but certainly in photography.

One rule I've generally gone with is the Rule of Thirds, where the main subject is at the intersection of horizontal and vertical rules, dividing the photo in thirds. It seems to give photos more life, less static.

But this photo, which won a first place ribbon at the York Fair, has the main subject -- the flamingo's eye-- smack dab in the center. As an experiment, I cropped the photo different ways, taking the black upper left corner out, accentuating it, etc. None of them worked for me.

And that the picture is nearly perfectly square isn't especially pleasing either, but rules are made to be broken.

And this photographer knew the rules and broke them-- properly and perfectly.