Themed Competition – Leading Lines

Judge: John Putnam

Website: https://www.jkputnamphotography.com/

Bio: John K. Putnam is a full-time nature and landscape photographer based on Mount Desert Island, Maine, home of Acadia National Park, where he operates a gallery of his work and leads photography tours and workshops. When he moved to Maine in 2015 he began offering private, instructional photo tours with the mission of building personal photographic experiences for clients, no matter their needs or skill level. He also leads multi-day educational workshops in Acadia, Maine’s Bold Coast, The Great Smoky Mountains, the Finger Lakes Region of New York, and he has upcoming workshops in Quebec and Alaska. In addition to operating his own photography business, John is an instructor for Out of Chicago and DownEast Adventures and has contributed work to DownEast Magazine, DownEast Calendars, and Sierra Club.

Artist Statement:

Leading lines are powerful compositional tools that can improve a photograph by guiding the viewer’s eye through a scene or toward a subject. They add energy and can increase the feeling of depth in a landscape. Leading lines can be used like a sledgehammer, pointing our eye exactly where the photographer wants us to look, or like a fine-grain sheet of sandpaper, smoothly shaping the flow of the photograph into a continual orbit of view.

 

The photos that speak to me most are those that surprise me—unique images that ignore expectations while embracing individuality. I look for photos filled with mystery, such as a landscape draped in mood or atmosphere or an abstract take on an isolated subject. I love images that tell stories, have clear subjects, use metaphors, capture moments, and have a unique or unusual quality. I appreciate subtlety.

Theme Definition:

Leading lines are defined as lines that appear in a photograph that have been framed and positioned by the photographer to draw the viewer’s eye through the image in a specific direction  toward the subject or designated area of the photograph. They can be straight or curved, horizontal, vertical or diagonal, and everything in between. Leading lines can be created by any element within the scene, such as roads, rivers, bridges, buildings, or even people. The important thing is that they create a visual path for the viewer to follow, leading them towards the subject and creating a sense of depth and movement within the image. Click here for examples of Leading Lines.

The following links provide more information on using leading lines.

https://visualeducation.com/leading-lines/

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/leading-lines-photography.html

https://www.theschoolofphotography.com/tutorials/leading-lines-photography