Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #5 Leading Lines

Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge (CCY) will be a combination weekly “tips and tricks” combined with a photo challenge.

To find out who was awarded the Gold Star Award and Features for this week, please see CCY Week 4 – Gold Star Award and Features (Simplicity).

To find out more how to enter this challenge check CCY Home page.

This week’s CCY Theme is Leading Lines.

Essay

I feel this is a good topic to follow simplicity. Most leading line photos are fairly simple. The main point of focus is to let the dominant line lead your eye through your photo to a certain end point. That leading line can also take you entirely through your photo and beyond. Oftentimes the viewer will want to know where that line will lead, but they will have to rely on their imagination because it’s not in the frame. That’s when you know you have an exceptional photograph, when you leave them wanting to know more.

Most of the time leading lines will be something simple, like a road or shoreline, a single point of interest. There are times, though, that many lines together will lead your eye through the photo, such a waves along the shore, if you are high enough to get a good view from above. All the lines will start out looking to be parallel to each other but come closer and closer together in the end.

Not all lines are leading lines. Look for the lines in your photo that pull, or lead your eye along. For example, a picture of an old office building downtown might have lots of lines. Your see some kind of a horizontal line that separates the floors. There might be columns creating vertical lines. The outline of the building and its roof will be a series of lines. But unless you choose one of those lines to grab your viewer’s attention, it won’t be a leading line.

Most leading lines are fairly straight. They can be placed in any direction in your photo. For this exercise, I just want your eye to be trained to see and define leading lines.

Pay special attention to man-made things such as:

roads
rails
fences
boardwalks, sidewalks
bridges
anything in a straight row
doorways
parking lot lines paths and trails

In nature, pay particular attention to:

rivers
shorelines
waves
sand dunes
trees in a row
farm fields
cliffs
rocks along a path
sun rays

Your Turn

Let’s try to keep your lines fairly simple and obvious. And don’t use crossed lines, because they break up the viewer’s concentration.

Exercise: Show us 4 to 6 leading lines photos. These photos should have fairly straight lines.

Extra credit for Gold Star Award

Show at least two photos of lines that have a slight curve or “S” curves. This a different kind of leading line than the straight one, but it still takes your eye through your photo.

For those who don’t have cropping or other editing capabilities, just mention it in your post and you will still be considered for the bonus round.

Current Series – All About Lines

Week #5 Leading Lines
Week #6 Horizontal Lines
Week #7 Vertical Lines
Week #8 Diagonal Lines

The Next Series – The Rule of Thirds

Week #9 Right or Left 1/3 of your photo frame
Week #10 Top or Bottom 1/3 of your photo frame
Week #11 Using 1/9 to 2/9 of your photo frame
Week #12 Using 2/3 of your photo frame
Week #13 Critique My Work – I will give show you a couple of photos and you can either copy them and correct the compositional errors or write a post about how I got things wrong or right.