Consider the line. The line may be the simplest form in geometry. And in our perception.

Or not. Not quite.

The point is simplest. Maybe.

But lines are made up of an aggregation of points.

Points themselves are aggregations of points, until you go down in scale to the molecular, atomic, or subatomic level. To put this another way, zoomed way out, a circular photograph—such as made by an 8mm round, wide-angle fisheye—can appear to be a single point or dot.

Zooming in, if there is enough resolution, the closer you get, the more you can see the points within that make up the point. Resolution willing—perhaps you are in Photoshop on a large, high-resolution monitor at 1,000 percent magnification—each of these points that you have previously enlarged can themselves be enlarged. And so on. The world at large is composed of worlds in the macro-aggregate. (This concept is illustrated on pages 20–21).

But let’s get back to the line. In terms of how we see the world and view photographs, lines are perhaps the most basic of all forms, and are a better starting place in the quest to understand and work with composition than the point.

Starting with a line, you can go almost anywhere.

Aggregations of lines make up shapes. As they make the shapes, lines help provide the illusion of depth, perspective, and contrast. Lines are the hard-working soldiers—you might say, “line workers”—that build the scaffolding that is composition, and form the underlying basis for composition in art.

So, let’s consider the line. Particularly the expressive line.

Some lines just sit there. They don’t do anything. Think of the light blue horizontal lines on a sheet of notebook paper as an example. These lines are the utilitarian bureaucrats in the world of composition. Basically, one should pay no attention to them unless an image embraces regularity as an underlying scaffolding.

Other, more dynamic and interesting lines convey questions, thoughts, and emotions. These lines are expressive and have meaning that is conveyed by what they are.

How can a mere line do this? How can a simple line convey so much? To analyze these questions, we can begin by thinking about some characteristics of a line:

• Weight—this refers to the thickness of a line and is a holdover from the time when lines were created by pressing a stylus, so the “weight,” or thickness, of the line depended on how hard the stylus was pressed.
• Color—lines are easier to see in monochromatic composition, but play a vital role in color composition as well.
• Direction—even lines that are not explicitly directional often have an implied visual movement and direction.
• Curvature—how much or how little the line curves.

The weight of a line really means how dark the line is, and thus also involves color. A very dark line splits space, and may convey determination, or possibly anger. When a line is very faint, or light, it might indicate indecision, or even tension over whether the line itself should exist.

A faint line cannot be used to anchor a composition that is primarily linear, as are Line Dance, on pages 20–21, and Reichenau Causeway, on page 18. If you are going to use lines as the crucial aspect that dominates other shapes of a composition, you must be fearless and bold. The very rarity and unlikeliness of this kind of composition gives it power and grace, but the fewer the elements in the composition, the trickier it is to pull off.

Color may seem to be an obvious characteristic of a line (at least in a color composition). What perhaps is less obvious is that the choice of color conveys an underlying emotion to the viewer. Bright colored lines in oranges and red often are happy, while dark colored lines in black, brown, and somber hues can be unhappy.

Photographically speaking, it is often easiest to see how lines form a composition when working in the absence of color, in black and white. Another way to put this is that our eyes love color, but they are often misled by color, and the underlying composition is best seen and constructed without color; thus, one way to check your composition can be to view your image in monochrome.

A composition that presents an inherently sad subject (perhaps involving loss or memory), but uses bright colors, will strike viewers as dissonant, though they may have no idea why. Conversely, a happy subject in dark colors may often make viewers think that conflict is around the next bend—for example, a storm may be coming.

Almost all lines in a composition have an implicit direction. Absent an arrowhead at the end of the line, it may not be fair to say that a line is directional in a cartoonish sense, but the truth is that lines by their very nature guide our vision. We look along lines, and usually we do the looking in one direction only, even if we then retrace the visual path.

Our eye follows the line and we are guided in how to approach the composition, where to enter it, and where to leave it (see pages 136–157). Certainly, as a photographic artist, once one understands the “look along” nature of lines, one realizes that one way, or direction, of looking is usually preferred.

With a preferred direction, one can then work to enhance the directional bias, and to make sure that the entire composition is in sympathy with the implied direction, or at least that the direction is used to enhance the composition.

Using direction in this fashion creates the possibility for entry and exit points in a composition: an entry point is where most viewers start looking at an image, and an exit point is where the gaze leaves the photo, even if this does not occur consciously to the viewer. For more about entries and exits, see pages 136–157.

A straight line is often not considered curved. (Actually, and more technically, a straight line is a kind of curve.) But in order for a line to convey emotion, it is the wiggles and waggles, or simple swoops that count most. Lines without curvature are rare in life and photography, and are almost always man-made. But when they do occur, they can create bold compositions because of the iconoclastic nature of an uncurving line.

A line conveys emotion. A line conveys power. So how can you use the emotive power of lines in your work? Here are some ideas for thought.

Take a simple stylus—such as a pen, pencil, marker, crayon, etc.—and a piece of paper. Draw lines. Which lines matter the most? Which lines convey emotion all by themselves?

With a color landscape photograph, explore the nature of the lines in the landscape. Can you diagram where the lines are, and which lines are important? Next, convert the color landscape to monochromatic. It should be easier to see the role of lines in the composition now. Verify this. Finally, with the role lines play in the black-and-white version of your image made clear, work in post-production to emphasize the impact of lines in this composition.

Create a photograph. Your photo can use any kind of subject matter that makes simple use of what is essentially a single line. In other words, one line or a few lines should be the entire basis of the image.

Want to take this a step further? Make sure the line is essentially straight—and either horizontal or vertical, but not both. In this exercise, the entire composition comes from this “straight” line.

Other than points, lines are probably the most basic shape. We’ll be building on lines to understand compositions of far greater complexity. But in the meantime, lines will take you a good distance, and get you started on the important work of understanding the basics of photography as two-dimensional design.