Breaking the Rule of Thirds in Style

[caleb]

Style may be relative, but a friend was wearing these shoes so I took a few quick pictures. Here's one of them. ok?

[Frog]

Love the contrast of the old stairway and the new shoes but man oh man I wish you'd gone vertical.

[Don Schaeffer]

It seems like this follows, does not violate, the rule of thirds.

[readingr]

This is alovely shot and meets the rule of thirds.

The contast of the yellow shoes makes the photo.

Roger R.

[Shebang]

How does this follow the rule of thirds if the focal point yellow shoes are in the center?

[readingr]

How does this follow the rule of thirds if the focal point yellow shoes are in the center?

Draw the thirds grid on the picture and you'll find the heel of the top shoe and the top of the bottom shoe are on the top thirds line

walls meeting the steps at the top are on the vertical thirds line, or close enough not to matter.

So as far as I am concerned it complies.

Roger R.

[caleb]

Thanks, I also thought it didn't comply with RoT (mainly because the shoes are dead center horizontally). There's another rule of thumb I didn't follow by cropping right at the knees. I'm assuming it worked out for this.

Frog, this is something I think I should be doing (shooting both orientations) all the time. Sadly I didn't on this shot. I will in the future.

The stark contrast between the ancient, used, and worn staircase and bright, new shoes were what I was going for. Glad to see that it was conveyed

... since I always like to know for other people's shots, I shot at 16mm (1.5x crop factor), f/5.3, 1/40 with an on camera flash (you can see shadows from her legs on stairs).

[Shebang]

Hmmmmmm.................when I think of the RoT, I usually think in terms of the intersection of the vertical and horizontal, not one or the other. This photo compositionally has appeal to me, but I did not see the thirds rule here.

Thanks, readingr...............

and good shot, caleb!

[Frog]

Rules only apply when you can't be otherwise creative.

[Overbeyond]

I like your idea here Caleb and it works very well. I think I would remove a little from the top to just above the top step/landing thus eliminating the bit of black trousers.
BTW Give this shot a good title and forget about the "rules".