I enjoyed reading Alan Briot's "How to Choose the Best Lens For a Specific Composition".
The way I learned it was: "Compose with your feet. Crop with your lens."
This leaves out the vertical orientation, of course. Your feet have to walk to the right location for seeing your foreground, middle, and background. Once there, you have to decide whether to stand & shoot, lie down in the mud, or go get a ladder!
After that, you decide what to exclude by your choice of lens. Sometimes, you choose a wider angle than your composition calls for because you need the extended depth of field. Then you have to crop the negative or digital image to get back to your composition--and accept the loss of quality inherent in using less than your full frame.
