Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Two oft-heard bits of composition advice are, "get closer!" and "follow the rule-of-thirds."

For how many photos/subjects do you guess/know-from-careful-recordkeeping/feel-from-undocumented-experience/predict these two suggestions agree, and for how many do they indicate different, even opposing, courses of action?

If/when the two rules conflict, do you feel one usually/always takes precedence over the other? If not, how often do you find yourself following each over the other?

Yah, this should be a poll, but I really don't want to take the trouble to do the post-differently-to-different-journalling-sites thing and then nag all the LJ users (the vast majority of my readers) to register at GJ or IJ or CJ to fill out the poll, just yet. (AFAICT, polls are one of the things where OpenID doesn't just make things work automagically.)

And for folks who aren't photographers and/or serious art students or ex-students, did you have to Google "rule of thirds", or is that reasonably generally-known? Also, does it show up in UI design and publishing page-layout design too, or is it "an art thing"? (Okay, now I should be asking Google ...)