Tension
There's a rule in composition: Never arrange in halves.
I get it. Dividing down the middle is ironically out of balance. Ironic. I find myself doing just that a lot. There is a tension that gets set up, a vibration. It's not always right nor is it always wrong. Sometimes, to understand the rules it's necessary to break them.
Do your homework! Because, then, you are entitled to go against what is taught. I see great writers doing it all the time. In "The Road", Cormack McCarthy uses sentence fragments all the time. Taking risks often leads to magic.
Here, I was shooting way above Eagle Creek from a footbridge and I found the fern strewn embankment equally interesting as the tree shadow-dappled water and sun- touched creek bottom. I split the difference and it became a little hard to read what the image is at first, which I like. There's no scale which is also intriguing. I'll follow with a few more examples of how compositional problems became more interesting when using the centerline to advantage.





