Well, I did say I hoped this mandate would provoke some discussion, so I
guess I'd better get to work and do a critique to get the ball rolling...

As usual, comments are from a very personal perspective.  Overall, I like
the group of work I'm looking at.

Tom Hudson: this is one of my favourites.  Which rule is being broken - is
it that the main subject isn't the one that's in focus, or is it that it is,
and it is the subject that's looking away from the camera?  Either way it is
a very effective double 'portrait', and maybe the uncertainty about which
one is the 'main' subject is part of why it works so well.  The DoF is just
right, still leaving the defocused 'second subject' clearly separated from
the background, and leaving enough detail in the background for it to be
recognisable what it is without it being distracting.

Mark Lauter: another case of focus - or at least, sharpness - being the key
'rule' that is broken.  The panning blur has turned the water into a very
attractive background, giving almost a brush-stroke effect that heightens
the sense of this being an impressionist painting.  The three birds (just
the right number!) are well placed in the frame, and I like the muted colour
palette.  The rocks(?) bottom right help anchor the image, and prevent the
background from being too uniform.  I could see this one hanging on the
wall.

Paul. Furman: well, as a self portrait you've certainly made a good pun on
your own name!  I'm not sure which 'rule' I'd say was being broken here, but
it's certainly an effective image, and the exposure works well for what is
not an easy shot to expose.  I like the positioning of the clouds a lot:
they balance the image perfectly, and the way the flare spots 'lead' to the
highlight on the cheekbone is also effective.  Much more interesting than
the usual self portrait.

Rich Pos: rather a beautiful image, but I'm not sure which 'rule' is being
broken, unless it is the central placement of the subject.  In this instance
that works well, because it emphasises the way that the bracket fungus is
divided into 'halves' but they are not mirror images of each other.  The
foliage on the right, slight curve of the tree-trunk, and the OoF trees in
the background also all add effective elements of asymmetry that work to
make that central placement feel 'right'.  I like the bokeh of the
background, but wonder if the shadows are a tiny bit dark, and the
highlights  _just_  blown out - that may well be down to
scanning/post-processing though, of course: I can't tell.  This is a little
different from the average mushroom shot, and I like it for that.

Peter Boorman ('Bandicoot'): yes, that's me.  Perhaps I should leave it to
someone else to say which 'rules' they think I was deliberately breaking.
The three main figures are all friends at a party where I'd been asked to
provide a few shots.  I was shooting colour as well, but wanted to use some
B&W and so used a single roll of Kodak T400CN in a Ricoh R1 that I could
slip in a pocket.  The R1 has a switchable lens giving full frame 30mm or a
cropped 'panoramic' 24mm - you can 'fix' it so it'll give full frame 24mm
too, but then the corners vignette severely.  I like it as a B&W camera: I
seldom use on with colour.  The 24mm pano. format is good in crowds, and not
as unflattering as using the 21mm lens on my GR21 - another 'pocketable'
option - would be.  The very white T-shirt is deliberate, but I know it is
slightly blown out on this scan: that is the scan, not the negative, so I
must scan it again when I have time.

Owamanga!: lots of 'rules' being broken here - the subject is unsharp, no
one is looking at the camera, the subject is cut-off by the edge of the
frame, and there are things poking into the image that we can't even
identify.  All of which is good!  I like this shot, as it seems to capture
something of the sense of wonder and uncertainty the baby must be
experiencing as it explores and learns about the world.  Having the baby not
wholly framed by the edge of the mage adds to the sense of movement: s/he is
crawling  _into_  the frame rather than being tracked  _by_  the frame.  The
other elements, just out of focus blurs, balance the composition nicely by
their placement, and because we can't really work out what they are, they
don't distract us from the subject.  Another one I really like.

Walt Hanks: Walt has told us which 'rules' he broke, and also why the
'style' of the image particular fits the character of the subject.  It's
certainly a very effective portrait.  The boy is looking out of frame, but
has more space in the frame in the direction he is looking, so this is more
a bending than a breaking of a rule, perhaps, but the focus is certainly
unconventional.  Because the ball is sharper than the boy's face it gains in
relative importance, helping to overcome, to an extent, the way that the
human brain locks onto a face in any image (the hidden face in Owamanga!'s
picture is another example of a picture that would be less interesting if
the face were allowed to dominate).  Here the boy seems to be trying to
decide whether he wants to throw the ball to someone else, or keep hold of
it, and by making the ball sharper we are brought into that uncertainty much
more directly than we would be if we concentrated on his face and saw the
ball only as a secondary object.  The way he holds the ball with his jacket
cuffs, not actually touching it with his hands, adds to that sense of
ambivalence about what he wants to do with it.  Very effective portrait.

Alan Browne: I don't know which 'rule' Alan is breaking - unless it is the
one about hand-holding a macro shot!  He's focused pretty much where I would
have, though maybe I'd have gone for a tiny bit more DoF around the stamens.
The placement in the frame, and the cutting off of the ends of most of the
petals works just right, for me, but I'm a little unsure about the of mass
of another flower at top left: it seems to unbalance the picture a little
for me,without any similar masses elsewhere in the background to balance it.
The tiny bright sliver of pink to bottom right is also slightly distracting.
Since this is the kind of shot I do thousands of, and for money, maybe I'm
more picky than I should be, and probably am much more prone to apply my own
specific style to looking at this than I would be with, say, a portrait
which is something I do very little of.  Indeed, apart form those two minor
quibbles about the background, I like this shot - probably because the
framing and composition are very close to what I would probably have done
myself: well, we all have our prejudices.

Jim Kramer: I think the dog may be trying its best to break the rules of
gravity here...  This is a quirky shot, leaving the viewer wondering what's
going on.  The cut-off of the dog's ear, and the man's presence suggested
only by a shoe and jeans leg, both add to the feeling of dynamism.  There
are several things in the shot, but all but the dog and the jeans leg have
been reduced to very simple shapes, and that gives the image a certain
power.  On one level it is almost a snap-shot, clearly grabbed quickly, yet
it is also effective in this sense of man and dog surrounded by a confusing
array of simple but unclear shapes.  This one grows on me the more I look at
it.  Presumably this is some sort of dog show / competition, with the dog
carrying the ball round some obstacles?

Al Denelsbeck: strong Woods effect on the trees makes it clear to us this is
an IR shot, and deeper IR than most films go, while the lack of halation
tells us it wasn't done on HIE - so we know it's probably digital even
before Al tells us it was taken on his 'Hasbro'.  The two people in the boat
aren't really the 'subject' of this picture, surely the trees are that, but
they are the 'key' that anchors it and makes it much more than just a shot
of trees that is interesting only because of the IR effect.  Their placement
is certainly unconventional, well down in the corner, but it works: it
emphasises the size of the trees, and helps to stop the eye from lingering
on the boat to the detriment of the foliage.  This one too is growing on me,
and I like a it a lot.  My only problem with the composition is the vertical
band of pale foliage just above the water-line on the far right: I find that
a little distracting and wonder if it would be better either cropped out, or
toned down a bit by burning it in.  I suspect this is an image that looks
best when printed quite large.

Well, altogether I like this crop of pictures, and am pleased both with the
number of the entries and with how few are archive shots, for a mandate that
does rather pre-suppose there might be a lot of archive shots.  I'm also
pleased that Brian has followed it with a serendipity mandate, as it
emphasises the point I hoped to make with this one: that I was looking for
shots that worked because they deliberately broke 'rules', not the ones
Brian has asked for that work despite, or because, they accidentally 'went
wrong'.  Both can be fun, and they aren't the same.  (I think I know what
I'll put in for Brain's mandate already, if I can find the print and scan it
in time.)

Peter