Using lines in composition: Implied Lines

I was asked to look at two photographs from  my course material and discuss how implied lines were used in the images. I have scanned in the images and added arrows to explain which lines I thought were the most dominant ones creating the most amount of movement.

The first shot of the bull fight, the line on the floor indicates a circular motion as though the man and the bull are twisting around he frame. The strong horizontal line in the background gives the image stability and enforces the idea of the bull being a powerful and strong animal.

The second shot by Gotthard Schuh appears to have many more lines involved. The first most striking one is the one created by the eye line of the horses and their corresponding shadow along the ground. Also the mans eye line to the horses means you are constantly drawn back and forth between the two directions. There is a very strong diagonal where the horses heads and bodies are leant in such a way, and the line is continued in their shadows below them. The tension between this and the for mentioned  lines creates an atmosphere that the horses are being whipped around as the eye is drawn in both directions very swiftly and back again.

I was then asked to take two shots of my own, one to show an implied eye line and the other to show an extension of a line or lines that point.

In this first image I have created an implied eye line from the child, and it is extended through the arms touching so that you are drawn to the hand that she is looking at. This is very powerful as you follow her site to the most touching and influential part of the image.

My second photograph was a close up of some coins on a work surface.

In this shot the implied lines are the connection of the ‘points’ which are the three coins. it created an implied line through to the back of the image. To enforce this, the coins to the left also create another implied line that ends at the same point, so that the viewer is forced to follow both direction right to the back of the frame without realising.

Lines: Curves

The last exercise to do with lines was about how curves create movement in a piece and how they emphasise direction. Here are my examples:

Curves are always thought of as elegant and graceful, and the curve in the bracelet leads you elegantly to the perfume bottle at the top. It makes the image feel softer than just a static shot of the bracelet in a circle or a straight line.

 

 

 

The curves of these spice jars give the image a rounded effect and draw you from one side to the other in a sort of arch. It makes you feel like the direction goes around and around the jars.

 

 

 

 

I think this is the image I like best that represents curves. The flowing ripples in the water help create the direction and movement that the geese are swimming in. It helps to activate the image, making the subjects feel like they are still flowing towards you.

In this last photo, I think that there is a subtly implied curvature to the walls and ceiling that is created through the oak beams in this building. so that your eye creates an imaginary arch from the floor and up over the ceiling to the other side and back again. It makes the room feel more circular than it actually was.

Curves are very good for activating an image through implied movement and direction, and can be amazing at softening an otherwise statically placed subject. 

Lines: Diagonals

In this section I took a look at diagonal lines in the frame to see how they activated an image.

From an off centre viewpoint the lines created by these steps can be seen as diagonals as the come from the upper left of the frame down towards the lower right. They help to draw your eye from the man sitting on the right to the people walking on the left.

In this shot the row of trees is taken at an angel so that it makes an implied diagonal working its way to the back of the frame. This is a useful way of making the viewer feel that they are being drawn deep into the picture by following the implied lines to the furthest point in the background.

 

 

This time I stood straight on to the buildings but adjusted the angle of the camera to make the buildings feel like they were sloping, and the natural horizontal lines within the photo then become diagonals within the frame. As I stated with my horizontal pictures, horizontal lines created a feeling of balance, but now that the image is tilted, it makes the shot feel off balance, creating a sliding movement through the piece as if you could just slip off the end! It makes for an unusual tension in a piece if something should naturally be level and is shot in a way that it appears unbalanced.

My last image was off some flags that were flying above me. Again by changing my viewpoint they became a diagonal through the frame instead of the horizontal they would have been had I shot them from a position stood back from them. Instead I stood below them to create the diagonal.

There are very few natural diagonals to shoot images off, but by changing your view point or adjusting the angle of the frame can make the images feel off balanced and this sense of movement is useful for making the viewer travel in the direction of a specific subject in the frame. I quite like how some diagonal lines in shots make the viewer feel off balanced, I may experiment more with this in the future.

Lines: Horizontal and vertical lines

I have now started to look at how lines play a role in composition and what effect they have on the way the photograph comes across. I will start with the shots I have taken to represent horizontal lines:

In this first shot the horizontal line is very obviously the natural level of the water in my fish tank. It gives the frame a good sense of balance and helps to show the fish under water.

With this next image it is the natural horizon of the sea meeting the buildings in the background that creates the horizontal line. It is very strong and plays for dominance in the frame over the boat in the foreground, proving that lines can be very strong in an image.

In this photograph I placed the camera on the floor to give the impression of a horizontal line running underneath the dog. Because he is laid flat on the ground it makes him appear he is balanced on a line, and also the pattern on the carpet helps to enforce the idea he is laying on a horizontal line.

This last shot has two elements that create horizontal lines within the frame. The edge of the water is a natural horizon, but the row of trees all at the same distance from the camera also creates another line above the waters edge through the middle of the frame.

I found Horizontal lines give the frame of the picture balance and makes the image feel quite static and still. Its quite difficult to always find other examples of horizontal lines which were not natural horizons already.

My vertical photos I felt were much more striking:

The strong lines in this chair back make it feel very strong in appearance when photographed with a fairly plain background.

 

 

The great thing about shooting in portrait mode is that it can instantly make something feel much taller, and when used in conjunction with vertical lines running trough the image it has a very dramatic effect on how those lines appear. The lines that were reflected in this champagne glass and the glass itself would have appeared much more static in a landscape orientation and so changing the frame to a portrait style has made the vertical lines of the piece stand out more.

Although at first this shot looks quite average, the first thing the viewer will notice is that they are drawn to looking up and down the bodies of the people in the shot, even though it is shot in landscape. People actually make quite dramatic vertical lines when they are stood upright.

Again like the champagne glass, by taking this image in portrait orientation the height of the trees is amplified, and the many vertical lines in the frame cause the eye to travel rather than become static, even though the trees themselves are static objects.

 

It is clear to me now that horizontal lines help to create balance for the viewer and have a strong impact on how static the image may look, where vertical lines create movement within a piece. A combination of the two within a frame could create a very dynamic photo through tension of the two types of movement, depending on how balanced the two elements were.

Points: Multiple points

View Full Album

The above album will show how I took a selection of objects, and then went through a process of positioning them one by one as points within the frame, carefully moving them so that it changed the relationship between them with implied lines and shapes. It took me a while as each new object added and each new position changed the dynamics of the still life photograph. This was my final image in which I thought the objects were best placed and still kept the image active, not static:

The objects create two implied lines that draw your eye from the upper left to the lower right and back round again in a sort of loop. There are also implied shapes between the objects that helps you group them together, but also lines that zigzag across the frame so that the eye is constantly moving around between the lines of the objects, keeping it an active image. The examples below show the implied lines and shapes and how they work within the frame. Please click to enlarge:

Implied lines

Implied triangles

Implied zigzag

Over all I like the way that the items sweep across the frame, like they have just been blow onto the material. I’m not so keen on how obvious the straight lines are from the left to right, I think I could have positioned the objects in a slightly less orderly fashion and still retained the effect of having them draw you across the image.

Multiple points work well within a photograph if they are not positioned statically, and in this way they keep the eye constantly moving and discovering new lines, paths and shapes throughout the image. If the items are seemingly very random or similar and have qualities that are neutral then keeping the image active is important. If my chosen objects had been ones that were trying to create a very strong message then placing them in a more traditional way might have added to the amount of tension in the image, making it much more dramatic.

Points: The relationship between points

After looking at single points and how there simplicity can work well with implied direction and movement, I moved on to looking at how two points within a frame can create tension between themselves as they fight to be the dominant part of the photograph.

In these two images you can see how the two points within them create a line between themselves, so that the eye flits from one to the other and back again constantly, and so your mind cannot resolve the composition. I find pieces like this are great for holding the viewers attention as they are images that you must look at for a long time until you come to the conclusion which point is the more important focus, but the other point will always draw you back to it again occasionally, causing slight tension in the image.

The only exception to this rule is in the example of taking a shot of a pair of eyes where they are placed symmetrically in the frame, and therefore take up the exact attraction equally.

The relationship of the size between the two points is an important factor over which is will draw the most attention. The two orchids above have similar sized points so they appear equal in importance but there slightly unequal balance to each other creates more interest between them. In contrast, the robin and the leaf are at different size, and there direction from one another make the shot feel as though the tiny robin should be the grand centre of attention, and also make him feel larger in comparison.

Carefully positioning two points within an image is a useful tool for activating an image and creating a dynamic between the two subjects. Its good for promoting emotions that could be implied by the two objects, but this can also damage the image if they are not the only subjects involved.

Points: Positioning a point

Ok, first exercise of the second part of my course which is titled “Elements of Design”, in which I will be looking at the basic graphic design principles of photography; arrangement of tones and colours, abstraction, lines, points and implied shapes etc.

I have also decided that to help with picking out these abstract ideas it would be best to view all my photography in black and white so that shapes and implied directions are seen more clearly.

 

In this exercise I started to look at points within photographs. I took a series of 5 shots where there was a single point in each one and tried to decide on how its positioning affected the movement within the photo.

Points will always draw the eye very strongly to itself and so can make a very impressionable image. Depending on its position can also give a feel of slight movement if the point is closer to one edge of the frame. I have drawn grid lines on each shot to show how the frame is divided by its point to emphasise this division and show where the movement is coming from. Please click the photos to enlarge them.

 

In this first shot for example of a candle, the flame is the obvious point. I have positioned it a little higher off centre so that the tall nature of the glass is taken into account, but also so the flame is not dead in the centre and giving the picture a very static feel. The movement is up and down the tall glass as the point is furthest away from this edge of the frame.

i have noticed from my next few images that I seem to favour positioning a point naturally just a little way off centre. This helps in not creating very static images where the point will ‘puncture’ the frame, but I think that I could have done more by using the extremes and putting points right on the edges of the frame to create more dramatic images. For example the photograph of my self in the mirror could have had a greater effect had I positioned the shot so the mirror was in the upper left corner, causing the eye to flow from the right to left.

I think that as we read from left to right, any movement from the opposite direction causes tension in a scene as it is unnatural for the eyes to move in this way ( I think this is why they make the horrible stuff jump out at you from the right in horror movies!), and movement from left to right seems much easier to view and make an image feel less threatening. This will not be the case with all things as subject matter plays an important role in how a picture is perceived, but also the severity of the movement has to be implied too.

I found that points don’t often come around naturally and a lot of my photos for points will have to be staged as it were. I am hoping this will help me improve my still life and indoor photography some more.