The Memories Captured Project: leading lines and where to find them in your neighborhood

Welcome to the Memories Captured Project, a series designed to help parents take beautiful pictures of their children. See more in the series here.

Today's post was lots of fun to write, and it applies not just to parents, but to everyone who wants to take better pictures. The subject? Leading lines.

Leading lines are lines within a picture that naturally draw the viewer's eye to the subject. Leading lines are one of the major compositional tools photographers use.

Take for example this little snapshot of my toddler at a picnic area:

Here are all the leading lines found in the photo:

Do you see how many elements of the table and seats draw your eye to the subject?

Leading lines can be either found in nature or found from the architecture of your setting, and are emphasized by strategic placement of your subject.

Here are a few pictures I snapped of my toddler in our neighborhood last week. They were snapped in the hour before bedtime, with my crazy toddler and my twins in the stroller, just around our house. But hey, if I can find leading lines without even trying, imagine how much easier it will be to find great leading lines when you have no other distractions and are purposefully focused on your goal.

Another example:

This is a little snapshot I took of my youngest daughter crawling last week. Do you see any leading lines?

Even the grains and grooves in the hardwood floor help draw the eye upward toward the subject.

The great news is that leading lines are everywhere. Everywhere! In the middle of nature, in the middle of a city, inside your own home.

Here are a few good places to find leading lines in your own neighborhood.

+ roads
+ sidewalks
+ pathways and walkways
+ stairs
+ playgrounds
+ fences
+ anything with multiple iterations in a row
+ shadows, clouds, or light bursts

A great place to start within your own home is your couch. If you take a picture of your child sitting on a couch from a straight-on angle, there's not many strong leading lines. But if you scoot your child to the side of the couch, and then take the picture from the opposite side, you'll find leading lines going straight to your subject. Then head outside and crouch down to take a picture of the sidewalk. See all the lines drawing your eye down the sidewalk to infinity and beyond?

Two examples of leading lines in rural settings:

The good thing is that, once you're thinking about leading lines, they are absolutely everywhere, and easy to find. It's a fun and easy way to really improve your composition and make your photographs more visually appealing.

And now I want to go out again, sans kids, for a fun leading lines shoot. Anyone want to come?

Does this help introduce leading lines?

I'd love to see your favorite leading lines pictures!