exposure meter rules supreme?

This is my first post for the "Freeman Patterson - Photography & the Art of Seeing" study group in DPChallenge. Not having gotten my hands on the book yet, my understanding is we're to work on breaking rules.

This photo is just about the only qualified one out of 400-500 I searched through from earlier this month, looking for a rule breaker. The rule would be "use what the exposure meter dictates." Well, I don't know if that's really a rule, and if it is I technically didn't break it here. I did use the meter to under-expose this shot so the rays of the sun contrasted better with the cloud background. The shot hasn't been post-processed yet.