convergence

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Last week I talked about S-curves, today I’m going to talk about the related and more general idea of leading lines. Leading lines are one or more lines in an image, typically diagonal lines usually coming up from around the bottom corners of an image. In particularly lines such as those formed by streams, railway tracks, roads, or geology along the ground. S-curves are a type of leading line, but here I’ll be contrasting them with lines that are typically straight or more simply curved.

Many of the things we said about S-curves apply equally well here, the lines seem to draw the viewer into the image, bottom towards the top. Similarly, I find that images that bring at least one of these lines from the lower-left are a bit more likely to work better for me, again probably related to the idea that the way we perceive images may be influenced in part by reading direction. (more…)