Following the rules

We ponder the Rule of Thirds, Maintenance of the Aim and teaspoons of nutmeg.

Our photographer admits that he did not have an art school education.  When he began to get more serious about the pictures he took, he did some research in the literature (as do all scientists) and kept coming on references to the “rules of composition.”  The rules themselves were not stated, only the necessity not to follow them.  Eventually he discovered an old book on photography for beginners that set them out.  They included such things as the Rule of Thirds: important objects should not be centered in the photograph, but placed at one-third or two-thirds of the way along, either vertically or horizontally.  Indeed, one of his cameras has these locations marked by lines on the ground glass of the viewfinder.  (Another camera has a grid with five squares across and four and a half down, which he normally ignores, but proved useful in producing a multiple-exposure picture of a lunar eclipse.  These don’t appear to conform to any Rule.)  His conclusion was that the rules were a useful way to get started composing photographs, and indeed many a good image could be shown to have followed them.  However, there must have been a tendency among some photographers to follow them too rigidly, which the books and articles he read were warning against.

Similarly, our navigator in his (amateur) study of military history, came across a reference to Principles of War that are still taught “in ex-colonial countries working off out-of-date training manuals.”  Later he found a more formal presentation of them, including such things as Maintenance of the Aim (that is, don’t get sidetracked from your original objective).  In his reading he could indeed cite instances of success in spite of the fact that one or more of the Principles was ignored.  However, there seemed to be more instances of defeats that could be traced to a plan or operation not following a Principle.  He concluded that they were best used as a checklist.  When finalizing a plan or conducting an operation, the commander might indeed violate a Principle, but should do it knowingly, understanding the risks that his force might be running.  (Of course, there is much room for argument in balancing, for instance, Maintenance of the Aim against Flexibility.)

To the Rules of Composition and the Principles of War we can add the Recipe for Pastel de Choclo.  The latter represents any set of directions for preparing a dish of food.  Almost always, following one of them will indeed produce what it claims, an edible and indeed tasty production.  Departing from the recipe in any significant way is ill-advised, at least until the cook understands a great deal of what might happen.  While substituting allspice for nutmeg shouldn’t be a problem, doubling the cooking time and halving the oven temperature will almost certainly produce unfortunate results.

We conclude that, when following Rules of any sort, it’s important to know what they are; what kind they are (beginning, ending or the path to keep to); and to have a good judgement of how far one can stray from them.