line in photography

As you’ve probably noticed, one of the common themes in all these lessons is, the use of elements to 

tell your eyes where to look

Line is no exception

It is one of the most powerful tools to do this.

Here are a few ways line helps our eyes when we look at a picture.

guide your eyes through the frame

When you look at a photo or watch a movie, you are not thinking about where your eye is going and why. But your brain subconsciously is looking for these clues on where to look. Line is one of the tools that does this along with shape, color, light and more!

highlight a subject

This trick is used often in portrait photography. To draw your eyes to the main subject, the person being photographed.

Lines can also be used to guide your eyes to other subjects in the frame, like an object.

Perspective

We learned in our last class that repetition is used in photography to show depth in the picture. Often this is repetition of LINE.

When you are looking at a picture, it is a two dimensional object. It just has height (top to bottom) and width (side to side). It’s not three dimensional since it doesn’t take up space front to back, or come out at you. Think about a circle and a sphere. The circle is a two dimensional shape and a sphere is three dimensional, taking up space with height, width AND depth.

Because a picture is only two dimensional, artists and photographers have been using tricks for yeeeeears to make them appear as though they are three dimensional. This makes the picture or art more believable. And makes you feel like you’re really there!

This is called perspective.

Repetition is a snazzy trick that painters and photographers use to show perspective.

If there is an object that you know is about the same size repeated over and over, lined up front to back, it appears as though there is depth to the picture.

Check out these pictures to see what I mean.

outline a form

Think back to your lesson on positive/negative space.

Do you when I had you look at your hand to identify the positive space of your hand and the negative space around it? And as we looked at our hands, we recognized that as we look at our hand, the negative space around it begins to create a type of outline to surround the subject. THIS is one way that line is used in a photo!

suggested line

layering