If you pay any attention at all to photography, you know that it is a medium of rules:--Don’t shoot into the sun.
--Never compose a photograph so that the subject is in the center of the frame.
--Always try for a composition where there is something going on in all corners of the image.
--Blah Blah Blah
Well, I have bookshelves filled with photography anthologies that prove that rules are at their best when ignored. Some of the greatest photographs ever made break this rule or that.
Two friends (they happen to be photographers) were here visiting us during the holidays. We took a drive up to Hurricane Ridge in the nearby Olympic National Park. Our drive started out in typical, Puget Sound-area rain and mist. It was probably 40 degrees. By the time we reached Hurricane Ridge (5240 feet in elevation,) temperatures were in the ‘teens, the landscape was covered in snow, and visibility was zero. We’d driven into fog.
Still, we were photographers. We would not be denied. On a day when it seemed like finding photographs would be difficult or impossible, we looked. And we looked. And we looked. Two pictures I shot are posted here, and they both are rule-breakers. One image has nothing but a white emptiness on one side of the composition. The other was shot right into the sun. But both photographs do follow My Number One Rule:
Photography I do for myself should be fun.
My friends and I had a great day. We got out into nature and we took a few pictures. On the trip home we stopped for wonderful Thai food. Life was good.
To heck with the rules.
