Elements of design - Lines in composition

The first part of the exercise is to look for the implied composition lines in two pictures given in the notes.

- In the picture of a matador, the matador's body conceals the bulls head. He holds a sword draped with a red cape in each hand. The continuations of the lines of the two capes point to the position of the unseen bulls head. The bulls head is "understood" by the viewer rather than seen. In effect, the composition leads the viewer to imagine the bulls head.

- In the picture of the man with two horses, the angles of the horses heads suggest that they are looking over their shoulders to watch the man who holds the reins behind them. There are therefore implied eye lines back to the man integrating the group of figures. In addition, there seems to me to be an implied semi-circle shape linking the man's body with its bowed shoulders and the curve of the twisting bodies of the horses.

The second part of the exercise is to look for photographic situations which illustrate the use of implied lines.

Image 1: Lady on the steps

Lens 18 to 70 mm at 52 mm. Iso 100 f8 at 1/160th

I noticed this lady resting after walking up the hill in these gardens in Bagnoles de L'Orne in Normandy. She is sitting at the apex of two lines of steps up the slope of the garden. I walked to a position where these came into reasonable alignment, which point the eye to her position even though she is small in the frame.

Image 2: Cow and calf

Lens 18 to 70 mm at 18mm. Iso 320 at f6.3 1/180th

I envisaged two potential subjects where I hoped to use eye-lines in composition.

- I visited local markets on three occasions looking for a suitable interaction between shoppers and market traders without success.

- There were also many fields of cows with calves close to where we were staying in Normandy. In this particular field, the cattle would move towards the edge of the field as the sun was going down. I went there several evenings but this was the closest I got to catching one animal glancing at another one.

I think this illustrates that I understand the principle even though the eye-line is not such a strong element in this particular photograph.