Lead-in Lines composition technique aims to draw your viewer’s eye through the photograph. This is a very useful and powerful technique to draw your viewer’s attention and hold the viewer’s interest to the main subject in your image.
The lead-in line formed by the road and the building lead the eyes into the the main subject at the background which is The Petronas Twin Towers
Lead-in Lines are lines found within an image that leads the eye to another point in the image, and sometimes out of the image. Anything with a definite line can be used as a lead-in line. For example; fences, bridges, roads, rivers, repetitive objects, even a beach shoreline can be used to lead the eye into your image.
The fence and part of the platform lead the viewers’ eyes into the picture and eventually to the main subject that is The Crystal Mosque
I try to use lead-in lines in my photographs as often as I can. They help to lead the viewer through my image and help add impact to the image as well. The use of lead-in lines is a technique often used when composing landscape images. When you look through your viewfinder or on the LCD screen on the back of your camera, you’ll need to organize and put all the elements in your image together in a way that is attractive for the viewer.
The more detail that the scene that you’re capturing has, the more important that this becomes. The most common ways of doing this in photography is to add a visual path in the image which the eye of the viewer can follow, and the easiest way of doing this is to include lines in your image that links the foreground to the background in your image.
The S-curve formed by the aisle between the tea crops acts as the lead-in line to lead the viewers’ eyes deeper into the picture to create a sense of three dimensionality.
The goal when using lead-in lines is to make sure they lead you through the image, or toward the primary point of interest. But not out of your image, as you’re trying to draw you viewer into your image and not out of it.
The use of lines in your image can be used to direct the viewer’s attention to the main point of interest in your photograph. These lines can be straight, diagonal, wavy, S-curve or any other creative variation. Just be very careful when using lines that they don’t lead the viewer away from your point of interest in the image.
However besides leading the viewers’ eyes to the main subject the lead-in line also creates an illusion of three dimensionality and depth. An illusion of three dimensionality and depth are essential in photography to represent the reality around us which is three dimensional as opposed to two dimensional medium of photography.
The lead-in line that leads the viewers’ eyes to the main subject, the Putra Mosque.
The historic Beach Street of Penang
The rocks and the shoreline form the lead-in line to the mosque as the main subject.
The pathway acts as a lead-in line to the majestic Old Palace of Seri Menanti.
