Just as with points in exercises 15 and 16, lines, as elements in design in my images, have featured regularly. See the image below from the new science museums in Valencia and Spain. I am certain that I have been attracted to the formality of the architecture and the roles that lines play. Equally I am certain that I have not consciously been aware of the exact role that lines play.
This exercise (17) and the subsequent ones on diagonals and curves in the OCA’s Art of Photography course is concerned with identifying lines as elements of design in images and then specifically identifying them in images. The emphasis is on the lines themselves rather than the subject matter. Making the distinction between the lines and the subject was challenging.
The first four images are concerned with horizontal lines. As the notes for the course (pages 74-77) note horizontal lines provide stability and weight whilst being static. Each of the images has a short commentary on the role that the horizontal lines play in the image.
The first image is of cloud over a mountain in the west of Ireland. The horizontal lines divide the image into three zones; the foreground bog, the mountain and the cloud.
The second image is a digital scan of a slide from the 1980’s. This is a Buddhist temple from the Guiyang province in China and the image is divided into three components by the horizontal lines; the foreground is the garden, the middle is the body of the temple and the roof comprises the third part of the image.
The third image is a beach and sea scene with the image being divided into three by horizontal lines; the sand, the stony foreshore and the sea itself.
The final image in the sequence is of cloud and sky taken on a recent flight. Although the image is relatively simple I feel that by placing the cloud, with all its textured and muted colours as the bottom 75% of the image and the sky as making up only 25% the right balance is struck between coud forming the base and sky the area above the horizon. The image was shot in RAW and worked in Elements to extract detail from the cloud.
The use of horizontal lines as elements of design is often found in landscape images where the strucured division into land and sky is realised through the placement of horizontal lines. Ansel Adams’ ‘Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, From Manzanar, California‘ is one such example. This image is clearly divided into stony foreground, mountain in middle distance and sky in the far distance by horizontal line placement.
In contrast to horizontal lines vertical lines have a greater sense of movement and are more challenging to the viewer. The four images below have strong vertical dimensions and, as with the previous clutch of images, each is accompanied by a short commentary.
The first image is taken through a slit opening in the Pope’s Palace in Avignon and, in turn, captures vertical features of the building through the slit.
The second image is a macro, hence the shallow depth of field, of the internal structure of a fossil coral. The coral, when alive would have been standing vertically and the plates, seen here as verticals, would have been horizontal growth plates.
The third image, is again a macro, but this time of the plant Astilbe – at this stage in its growth only about 5 to 6 cms high; I was trying to capture a woodland effect in miniature. The vertical elements are the red plant stems.
The last image is the strongly vertical structure of a disused industrial building’s lift shaft. Not as pretty as the third image but nonetheless displaying the vertical elements very strongly.
The use of vertical lines as elements of design and to help frame the image is very frequent, particularly in archictectural or urban photography and landscape photography where forests are the subject. The images by Albert Renger-Patzsch of industrial forms and smokestacks from 1927 and the alley in Thomas Annan’s ‘Close, No 61 Saltmarket’ demonstrate the use of verticals. In the case of Annan’s image the vertical element is heghtened as one is drawn through the image to the dark entrance at the end of the alley.
A critical feature of horizontal and vertical lines is the relationship they have to the edge of the frame. The eye will very quickly detect if there is misalignment and the lines are not perfectly horizontal or vertical. Interestingly Paul Strand used misalignment deliberately in some of his images of buildings. The ‘Church on the Hill, Vermont’ from 1946 is a good example of this. While the image is framed by exactly by two trees the verticals of the church are misaligned with the frame edge.
Bearing in mind the feedback and reflection from Assignment One the images by Renger-Patzsch and Saltman, while meeting the technical requirements of the use of vertical lines leave me cold. In contrast, Strand’s image evokes a slightly warmer response.
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