Entice the Eye with Leading Lines

Lines are like a visual siren song to the eye: where lines lead, the eyes will follow. If you've ever stood beside a long flat road leading off to the horizon, you know that it's almost impossible not to follow the road down to its vanishing point. I think it's just part of our visual curiosity; our brains just need to know the end of the story. Lines are easy to find in most outdoor scenes: fences, roads, a row of sailboats in a harbor. The key to using lines to entice the eye is to find a vantage point the provides a clear view of the lines and then to compose the shot to accent those lines. I photographed these corn rows early one spring near Prairie City, Iowa and shot from the raised road shoulder to get a little bit of height. I love the way the rows just seem to disappear over the hill. In this case the lines themselves became the subject.