Wide Angle Wednesday Preview #2

A long established principle of photographic composition is "Leading Lines" wherein strong continuous lines are used to direct the viewer's attention. Over the years "leading lines" have helped to create images of impact and intensity - very often transforming scenes and locations which had at first appeared to offer little immediate visual impact. One of these days, pull out a few copies from your "yellow shelf" of old "National Geographic" journals and flick through their glorious pages of impactful photography. You may be astonished to discover just how often "leading lines" have been utilised.

Leading lines can be made of many many different things: furrows in a ploughed field, winding country roads, meandering creeks and rivers, rows of posts or trees, fences, ship's railings, human arms, ropes, paths, garden implements etc etc.

You can be sure that just about ALL published examples of leading line composition have one thing in common. They have all been shot with wide angle lens focal length settings which have the capacity to lengthen perceived distances and enhance depth of field.

Tomorrow is the second "Wide Angle Wednesday" challenge (tag: widwed02). The theme is "Leading Line". Many people have told me that they can't participate because they don't have wide angle lenses. In my experience there are very few cameras indeed which do not feature lenses with wide angle settings. The shot above was captured at nearby Mt York with the aid of my garden variety Lumix FZ200 bridge (superzoom) camera. That camera features a pretty average wide angle setting of 25mm ff equivalent and yet it is more than capable of enhancing the leading line of the lookout railing. Anybody can join in the challenge tomorrow. Just look around you for the hundreds of natural leading lines which are to be found in your environment. You may be amazed at what you find. Want to read more about "leading lines" and look at examples? Try these links:

Leading Lines 1
Tutorial
Leading Lines 2
Tutorial 2
Tutorial 3
Tutorial 4

Just remember. Wide angle lenses are NOT about width. They are about depth.