How Leading Lines Can Improve Your Photos

There are many ways to control the way your viewer's eye interacts with your photos, and one of the most fundamental and powerful methods is to use leading lines. This excellent video tutorial will show you why leading lines are so powerful and how to implement them in your own work. 

Coming to you from Marc Newton with The School of Photography, this awesome video tutorial will show you why leading lines are a powerful tool and how to incorporate them into your own images. The idea of the leading line is two-fold. First, they can provide an easy and obvious way to pull your viewer's eye to the subject. Beyond that, they are an excellent way to create a sense of depth in an image. Obviously, a photo is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional scene, and when all that depth is compressed, things can feel flat, crowded, and lacking the sort of vigor and visual interest they would have when viewed in person. A leading line signals to the brain that there is a third dimension (depth) in the frame and can help the viewer see the photo more as the scene and less as a separate image. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Newton. 

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Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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