Portrait Photography How To

If you've studied landscape or nature photography, you've likely come across the idea of using "leading lines" in a photo to draw the viewer in. If you're not familiar with the concept of leading lines, it's where a photographer will purposefully compose a photo with natural or manmade lines included in the shot to draw the eye toward the main subject of the image.

Leading lines, however, aren't a method made solely for landscape photography. You can also use them to great effect in portrait photography as Marc Newton from The School of Photography shows you in the video below.

"Leading lines in photography is a really good compositional technique where you use anything you can find to lead your eye through the frame to a main focal point," Newton explains. "I am going to use leading lines for portraiture. I've also chosen probably the most uninspiring place you can get. We're just in an industrial estate and the reason I did that is because I wanted to show you how easy leading lines is. Lines are everywhere."

Watch below as Newton photographs a model to demonstrate how to use leading lines when shooting portraits.

"An important thing to note here is that lines can come into the frame from anywhere, e.g. top, left, right etc," Newton says in an accompanying blog post. "However, if they come from a corner and travel diagonally through the frame, they will create a more dynamic feeling in the image. Diagonals in images create a dynamic feeling. Using leading lines is a perfect compositional technique to add that wow factor to your photo. And for a viewer, leading lines create a path for their eyes to explore the image. "

Check out the video below and then head over to The School of Photography's YouTube channel and its website to see all their educational photography content.