“You don't take a photograph, you make it,” Ansel Adams once said. Great point, but let's take it a step further. An important thing to remember is that photographs are just a type of picture, and pictures are made of lines.
Leading lines in photography are existing lines within the frame of a photograph which the photographer has deliberately aligned/arranged (prior to taking the photo) by adjusting their composition either shifting their body or camera. It should result in lines which “lead” to the subject, increasing the focus of the viewer, allowing for a more enjoyable viewing experience.
Photographer Toma Bonciu (AKA Photo Tom) made this 10-minute video with 9 composition tips and rules you can use to shoot more effective landscape photos.
Composition can make or break a photograph. Here's a 7-minute video by photographer Peter McKinnon in which he runs through three tips to help you improve the composition of your photographs.
Here's a simple composition tip that promises to help add depth and impact to your images. Instead of thinking of light and lines separately, try to combine the two by having your strongest light source and your leading lines work together.
Recently I got a message from a person who said that they liked my pictures, but unfortunately they don’t have a "photographic eye." This inspired me to write the following article about basic aesthetics and their relationship to photography.
Here's a great video on photographic composition, created by The Cooperative of Photography using tips and photographs by legendary photojournalist Steve McCurry. Each of the 9 composition tips is illustrated with examples from McCurry's impressive body of work.
Star trail time-lapses can be absolutely beautiful, even mesmerizing. But as incredible as the stars themselves are, the foreground subject matter can really help to set the stage and take your images of the night sky to a whole new level.
WAVELIGHT by Gavin Heffernan and Harun Mehmedinovic is a perfect example of this. The duo used beautiful, eroded stone in Arizona as leading lines and contours that move your eye to the star trails, even as they add their own captivating tone to the entire creation.