Life through a lens

The 'rule of third' is probably the most fundamental rule in photography. It consists in mentally dividing your viewfinder or LCD screen in nine parts, resulting in nine sub-frames of your picture. You can follow the imaginary lines to compose the frame: you can use those lines to include your subject, or separate two or more different subjects including them into different sub-frames. But also, you can allign the main subject(s) to one of these lines.
I think that this rule involves so much the symmetry of a scene: breaking this rule means, basicaly, breaking the symmetry. It will be so difficult to obtain stunning pictures without this symmetry: only the true artists can do this. For us, common human beings, it's best to follow this rule, at least in its general aspects.
This is the reason why I started to look at all my old pictures with this rule in mind. I admit that I haven't found so much material to work on, but I found a nice photo taken last saturday in Venice. I shooted it in RAW mode and the result was a very bad photo. However, I decided to work a little bit on it, and the final result is this.

Well, I agree with you: it doesn't say anything but it's a good example of the rule of third. Indeed, as you can see in the following figure, there are some of the lines in the scene that are alligned with the lines of the sub-frames.

Take for example the first column in the left: the front of the building is completely included in that. Also take the central column: the church front (or back?) is once more included. Yes, I know that this shot isn't amazing, but I think that it gives you an idea of how this mechanism works. Undoubtedly, when finally I will have some time for me, I'll improve this rule, shooting more impressive scenes.