Photographing Structures with Leading Lines & Rule of Thirds Photo One

Subject Matter: Structures You will have to use 12 pictures for Leading Lines and 12 for Rule of thirds to document a structure or a series of structures. What is a structure?

Structures you can find…. Buildings- walk around a building, look through windows, look at ornamentation, look at tops, sides, fire escapes, etc. Manmade structures- metal, steel, wood, concrete structures. Lamp posts, fences, gates, etc.

Leading Lines Lines are wonderful elements in a photograph. They draw the viewer's eye through the image from one spot to the next, sometimes all the way around and sometimes in one direction. Keep these lines simple, and don't make them take attention away from the intended subject. Select a camera angle where the natural lines of the scene lead the viewers' eyes into the picture and toward your main center of interest. You can find such a line in a road, a fence, even a shadow. Diagonal lines are dynamic; curved lines are flowing and graceful. You can often find the right line by moving around and choosing an appropriate angle.

Rule of Thirds The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts. As follows.

The Rules! As well as using the intersections you can arrange areas into bands occupying a third or place things along the imaginary lines. As you can see it is fairly simple to implement. Good places to put things; third of the way up, third of the way in from the left , you get the idea. NOT places to put things; right in the middle, right at the top, right at the bottom, away in the corner. Think asymmetrical, not symmetrical A Rule of Thirds grid is built into some digital cameras. It can be turned on and viewed on the LCD.

Henri Cartier-Bresson