Today we’re going to look at the next chapter in the excellent free tutorial The American School of Paris has created to teach us how to improve our photographic compositions: Lines. If you missed the introduction, the first rule, Simplicity, or the second rule, The Rule of Thirds, we’d strongly encourage you to read those first as well as our introduction, simplicity, and rule of thirds blog posts before proceeding.
Lines are visually compelling and an important part of many photographic compositions. You can use them in the following ways to add to the dynamics of your pictures:
- Diagonal lines can provide a path for the eye to follow to the focal point of your picture.
- Repetitive lines can also draw attention to your point of interest.
- S curve lines provide a pleasing compositional aspect in any photograph.
You can also use other simple geometric shapes in your composition, such as triangles, in order to heighten visual interest.
After you’ve worked your way through the slides for this topic, please take a moment to go back and look at the photographs you selected after reading the introduction blog post. Are there any photographs in either stack that you feel make particularly good use of diagonal, repetitive, S curve lines or other geometric shapes?
Tomorrow, we’ll be looking at the next compositional element, balance. Hope to see you back in line then.
