When I took a Photography class in college, my instructor made it a point not to teach Rule of Thirds. (My Time with Film)

Or any other things like the golden ratio, and I understand where she is coming from. Her logic behind it was that once you got it in your head that this was the "optimal" way of framing an image, she noticed that over many classes all their photos started to look the same and she wanted people to be more organic about their composition.​It was a fun class, my first time in the darkroom (honestly glad it wasn't digital, my time in the darkroom was therapeutic). The tool I got for myself was a Nikon F4 and threw the 50mm 1.8D ($200 altogether, I thought it was a great deal) on there and had an absolute blast and gained a new appreciation for the craft. Coming from my daily driver, at the time, of a Sony A100 and constantly chimping, it was nice to slow down and deliberate more over my composition.​Half way through the semester my friend had told me they found an old Pentax 645 in a case in their storage and asked if I'd want to use it. You bet I did. Asked my instructor if she'd let me use it, and though she'd prefer us all shooting 35, she said go for it. She herself using the hulking Pentax 6x7. Still to this day the only experience I have shooting 120mm, and they were gorgeous. I learned first hand the image difference between 35mm and 120mm, there's some magic in how MF will render OOF areas and subject separation.​All in all, I was surprised with what I was able to take back to digital from a B+W Film class. I had a deeper understanding of working with contrast which helped me a lot at the time from when I was starting and being super edgy with my contrast when editing and it being too dark. It was a lot easier in some ways, even though I didn't have the convenience of digital, shooting in B+W made my colour-blindedness moot allowing me to just focus on the quality of the photo.​After many years I still try to turn off the "Rule of Thirds" thinking and just enjoy shooting for myself. For you guys that made it down to here, what are some things you guys learned throughout the years and try to stick by? What would you tell someone deep in the learning process?I also managed to dig it up, but here's my first contact sheet (Ilford HP5+ 400)​ via /r/photography https://ift.tt/2HlfxHR