span class="large"The photo on the left is straight out of the camera, I've not cropped it or fiddled with the thing in any way - promise. (I can show people attending our photography courses the original Raw file and it is exactly as shown here.)br/br/On the right I've divided-up the photo on the left into nine rectangles of equal area and drawn the edges where they meet using faint white lines. You can see the base of the tree is smack bang on the intersect of the lowest horizontal line and the vertical line on the furthest right. br/br/The Rule of Thirds has been perfectly observed. And the result is a very *pleasing image. In Step 2 you'll see a similar photo that has broken the Rule..!br/br/*The photo is so pleasing that I put it a black and white version in the panel of 10 photos that helped me get a Licentiate Distinction from the Royal Photographic Society - see here: a href="http://www.studiolavalette.com/p298675148/h102142fa#h102142fa"; target="_blank"http:/​/​www.​studiolavalette.​com/​p298675148/​h102142fa#​h102142fa/a/span