Exercise 24 - Horizontal and vertical lines

An initial look around came up with many examples of both horizontal and vertical lines, but on further consideration many were man made, so I had a rethink. The first four images with horizontal lines I chose are:

 Horizontal waves

The image was taken from a low angle with the lens at 150 mm to shorten the perspective and avoid any distortion from wide angle settings, so this comes into the category of ‘a mass of objects seen from a low angle’

Concrete steps leading to the West pier extension

This was again taken at a relatively low angle so it comes into the same category as the last one. I held the lens at 55 mm to retain some perspective, but avoid wide angle distortion.

Weather worn planking on the West pier extension

 

It took a while to find a position on the pier where there was a group of boards without vertical joints. I chose this area because of the interesting knots. This comes into the category of ‘a row of objects all at the same distance from the camera’

 Kipper rail in the smoke house

These were the last two rails of fish to be taken from the smoke house. This again falls into the category of ‘a row of objects all at the same distance from the camera’

The four chosen examples of vertical lines are:

Lighthouse framed by pier stanchions

This image of the redundant lighthouse was taken from the lower level of the West pier extension using the upper level supporting timbers to frame it. The camera was hand held, using vibration reduction with a narrow aperture to improve the depth of field. This falls into the category of ‘walls, posts and other man-made structures’

 Tree trunks seen at Cragside

I varied the green, cyan and blue sliders for the monochrome conversion so that the trunks were more pronounced in this image, which obviously comes into the category of ‘tree trunks’

 Wharf pilings

 

These pilings were photographed from the landing steps to enable this view. I used the telephoto lens at 150 mm to compress the distance. This must also come into the category of ‘walls, posts and other man-made structures’ even though the technique and type of shot is very different from the first.

 Reflections of boat masts

These are reflections of vertical masts which still appear vertical in the water. This image could vaguely fall into the ‘walls, posts and other man-made structures’ category, as the masts are obviously man made, but I think that using their reflection moves the image into a different category, as it’s now affected by the rippled water.

 

For the vertical images I used portrait orientation, to increase the ‘tall’ perception of the images. This felt right for these particular images, but it’s not a rule. Many vertical lines, particularly when they’re groups of many, will work better in landscape orientation.

 

It’s not easy to maintain horizontal or vertical elements of images exactly as they look. Using the frame grid in the viewfinder helps keep horizons horizontal – it must be referred to when taking each image. The use of wide angle lenses can also introduce distortion in these planes.