Central Focus: A Photographic no-no?

It is a widely held view that photographs that have their subject more or less dead centre are somehow automatically a failure. The 'rule of thirds' dictates that the point of interest should be at or around one of the intersection points of that 3x3 grid.

Well, the rule of thirds is a useful tool to consider but really one needs to be aware that a stream of ROT images will become boring very quickly! Here I advocate that the central focus theme often dismissed as a compositional tool, has value. It is of course aided if one can find and utilise lead-in lines. Don't be afraid to try it! One of the great advantages of digital photography is of course that you can shoot hundreds of pictures during an afternoon's shoot so you can try a number of compositional approaches on a subject and decide which works best when you are developing them on your computer!

Anyway, if a picture is worth multiple words, I'll just present some on this theme... .. hope you like them!