Sunsets from the Orme

Well, I like these sunsets. They're sufficiently different to the usual type of sunset photo that I've come back to look at them several times and asked myself why they work for me. And I think the answer to that question is that they have stripped a sunset to its bare essentials - light source, darkness and just enough illumination to show what the sun is setting on but not so much as to be distracting.

As for the rule of thirds, just a couple of points:
1. Accoring to Wikipedia, the 'Rule of Thirds' appears to have started a couple of hundred years ago as a guide to the ratio between warm and cold colours in a painting. It was then suggested as a rule for other aspects of composition. But even then there was scepticism: "This rule, however, does not supply a general law, but universalises a particular, the invariable observance of which would produce a uniform and monotonous practice. But, however occasionally useful, it is neither accurate nor universal..." (Field, 1845).
2. Leonardo put the Mona Lisa dead centre in the painting and her eyes - which are its focal point - are three-quarters up the picture.
Personally, I go along with the quote from 1845. And if Leonardo can put his subject on the centreline, so can other folk (and that goes for Spad, too ).

Steve

Never heard of the rule that rules are made to be broken? And anyway, most "rules" are not rules but suggestions.

But talking of rules, one that you appear to have overlooked is that if you can't say something nice, say nothing. Even if a picture is bad (and these aren't) you can generally find something to praise if you look hard enough.

Since coming back to this forum I have learnt that Spad consistently produces pictures of a high standard both technically and compositionally. Sunsets are such a popular subject that it's hard to produce a picture that pleases the jaded eye, but Spad has managed to produce not one but three.

No doubt you were having a bad day. We all do, from time to time.

George and Steve, thank you!!!

Thank you to everyone