I mentioned the benefits of getting low in nature photography in a critique. Here’s a photo I took of a Cattle Egret in Florida earlier this year that shows what I’m talking about:
Centering a subject is normally bad, but that’s not always true, e.g. a symmetrical photo. I use the rule of thirds as a starting point, and go from there. That might mean placing the subject on a third, or placing important points of interests on thirds.