“You don’t take a photograph, you make it,” Ansel Adams once said. Great point, but let’s take it a step further. An important thing to remember is that photographs are just a type of picture, and pictures are made of lines.
As photographers, we use lines to create visual interest with patterns, rhythm, and flow, and to draw attention to things. Learning to see lines and use them in your compositions is a big step in going from “taking pictures” to “making photographs.
One of the most important lines in photography is the leading line. A leading line is a line in a composition that guides the viewer’s eyes from one part of the picture to another. It is often used to point to the main subject or region of interest in the frame, and it’s a very effective tool to control how a viewer reads your picture.
Here’s an article I wrote for Petapixel.com about leading lines and how to use them.