Tuesday Tip: Leading Lines or Why Orchards and Railroad Tracks Will Always be Interesting . . .

It’s Tuesday night and I feel like the day has quickly escaped me. Heavy sigh. Last week I attended a little ‘ladies retreat’ in St. George with some good friends. Now that I am back home in the trenches of baby care I am reminded that there is not a lot of time to spend writing, photographing, sewing, crafting, etc. . . My house looks like someone ran a washing machine’s spin cycle one times to many in it. I am almost motivated to begin cleaning up, but not quite :) So instead I am writing on my blog.

While in St. George I took some fun pictures. I thought I’d post the one that I didn’t take (Chantiel set up the shot and we asked a random stranger to take it, so I could be in it too) and leave you with a little tip to go along with it.

This week’s tip: leading lines. Leading lines are lines that guide the eye through an image. Photographers and artists alike, use leading lines to draw a person into an image, or to accentuate a subject within that image. Leading lines are often used to create movement, stability or interest in a composition. Think of using the lines in your image as a ‘road for your eyes to follow.’ You want the viewers eyes to follow a certain path and then stop at the subject. If you have no subject, the viewer may feel lost to wander on your leading lines forever and their eyes will quickly wander away from your image.

These lines do not necessarily have to be straight. Examples of leading lines are seen in many popular portrait settings: Roads and paths can be used to lead to a subject like a house, a porch, or a person. Orchards create a line on either side of a subject that disappears into to ‘perspective point’ and draws the viewer into the image.

Railroad tracks have parallel lines that can be used to add interest to a scene or draw the eye to the subject. Walls: when shot from the side like below creates an image of many tiny lines leading to our subject.

The next picture is a fun non-traditional portrait. I like the way the window slats are repetitive and also lead to J's cute face.

and here is an example of using perspective to create the 'feeling' of leading lines. More on perspective in another post.

Isn't she CUTE?

What do you think? Are leading lines something that you use often, or rarely think about?

Well, it's time for me to follow some leading lines from my hallway to my bedroom. night night.