Leading Line control your attention

In this reading, we will go over a few important details on how leading lines play a role in guiding the audience’s attention within a composition. Leading Lines is one of many technique used in photography and cinema due to it’s powerful impact it has on drawing the audience’s attentions to look a certain pathway or at a subject. Let’s take a look at some images and recognize the usage of leading lines and how they help draw attention to a certain area of the composition.

Street Photography 2023, Darith Beng. 

In this images, there are no main subject however we are able to see how leading line created from the building and the road draw a pathway for the audience’s sight to follow. With this understanding, we are able to use this technique to draw attention to a subject within the frame that we are purposefully wanting. In this specific case, by placing a subject in the middle of the road, it would create an interesting composition since all the lines are already in place.

Street Photography 2021, Darith Beng.

In this composition, there are two kinds of leading lines, blue being the primary in which draw our attention to the main focus point while orange being the secondary acting as support that draw attention back to the main part of the composition. The blue lines is taking the viewer through a pathway that targets the group of people gathered in the middle of the frame all the way to the left end of the frame. The orange line created from the building act as a stopping point, where the eye will come to an end point. The motorcycle draws us back towards the group which is the main focal point. The top of the frame also has interesting umbrellas, it also create an “S” shape line that draw the attention back down towards the lower half of the composition. All of these leading lines draws us back towards the main focal point which is the group of people in the middle of the frame.

In the next few images, try to see if you are able to recognize some of the leading lines and how they impact the composition.

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