Lesson 1 Tip - Lead In's

One of the most import things I learnt during the first week in relation to the composition of a photograph is the lead in.  The Lead in can effectively make or break a photograph and it’s something that I’ve been looking at a lot while taking photographs this past week.  A lead in can be anything and when I say anything I mean anything.  If you are taking a photograph of a person then get them to turn slightly to their side and use their shoulder as a lead in.  The idea of this is so that you have something on the image to focus on, something which leads to the main part of the picture, in this example following the shoulder line will lead to the persons face. 

If you are taking pictures of landscapes look for objects that can give you a good lead in, the example below shows a popular area near the River Dee in Chester.  The picture is taken from the top of a foot bridge and as you can see the curved pattern of the benches gives you something to focus on, it’s these patterns you should look for to enhance your photograph.

Chester in the evening 

To show how a lead in works with a building, take a look at the below picture: 

The picture is clever as it uses the Company Sign to lead in to the building.  However, this picture can be improved greatly by lining up the top of the building roof with the top of the sign as shown below:



My First Published Work - Yay!! ;-)

This photo is current on the Companies Facebook page so you could say it is my first published work :)