After going through the withdrawal of missing last week's blog post, I pulled out my red pen and marked up a boat load of images, as per our author, finding the lines that led my eye.  If the image wasn't in a magazine, I drew imaginary lines on Facebook and Pinterest photos. In fact, I found myself standing in front of a photo in Starbucks, tracing with my finger in the air and then realized that people were watching me.

With my new found leading line observation skills, I created two photos for this week.  The first is of Billie sitting below our back patio in the early evening (dwindling) sun.

I particularly tried to use a diagonal line in this image.  I've added a yellow arrow (I failed arrow drawing for sure) below to give you an idea of the line I was going for.

Going from the left corner (near the rock wall) to the right upper corner (lilies) with Billie not quite in the middle, makes this image more interesting than if Billie was sitting next to the bush or along the fence line.  Even though there are other things that could grab the eye, they are inconsequential enough, and blurred enough, that the main diagonal line should grab the eye and lead to Billie.

Here is my second image.

This one is a little brighter as it was done a bit earlier on the same evening.  I placed Billie toward the "back" of this image, allowing the planks of the swing to lead to her, once again using an f-stop that would allow the blurring out of the background.  And of course, the image with arrows follows.

I have a number of shots with Billie looking different ways into the camera.  But this one called to me.  There are also two triangles in the image, which complement each other and add to pulling your eye into the story.  Can you find them?

The swing photo is now one of my favorites of Billie who can be very hard to photograph due to her coloring.  I shot all images this week with an 85mm f/1.4.

To see what others in the blog circle have done in answer to this week's theme, start here with Little White Dog Pet Photography, Sioux Falls, South Dakota to check out Kelly Middlebrooks leading line work.  Have fun and have a great weekend!

This week I had a host of volunteers ready to help me photograph my assignment.  I have found that when you train your dogs that little morsels fall from your camera, once you pull out your equipment, they all come running--looking for a job.

It wasn't an easy job this week.  My brain decided it had been taxed enough last week, and I was in a particularly uncreative  mood.  Then I passed our Do It Center and saw the adirondack chairs out front all ready for summer yard festivities, and realized we had some of these chairs, and that they might help me with this week's lesson.

Patterns create rhythm in a photograph.  I needed to create a pattern, then, I needed to throw an unexpected break in the pattern.  Yep.  That's the assignment.  Look for patterns, then look for breaks in the pattern.  A break will strengthen the photo.  Our eye gets used to seeing a pattern repeated more than a few times.  A break in the pattern can make a photo more interesting.

Billie was my first candidate/volunteer.  She is my break in the pattern of four chairs.  I did a distance photo, because at the time of day when I worked on patterns, the shadows cast under the chairs also formed a pattern.

I also experimented with the photo below to see if a break in a pattern would keep the eye focused on a certain subject, even when the background was pretty populated with "stuff."  Since Moe saw Billie get her treat for helping, he immediately came over to help.  I decided to allow him to break the pattern in a different way.  Even with the fence and woodland behind him (again, a distance shot), your eye should move to Moe.

I used a 35mm f/1.8 lens. No chairs were harmed in the making of these photos.

Now if I can get some volunteers to help clean up those leaves from the Fall, I promise to bake you a treat. The dogs have already told me they are not going to help me with that project.

To see what patterns were created and broken this week by other blog circle participants, start here with Susannah Maynard, Pet Love Photography, serving Greater Cincinnati and the San Francisco Bay area.

My task this week, was to go through some of my work over this last year and examine the lines in my photographs, specifically looking for diagonal lines.

Most people look at photos from left to right and top to bottom. A line that runs from top left to bottom right, will go with the natural flow of the eye, and will pull the eye to whatever is at the end of that line.  This, according to our author, David Duchemin, has the potential to give our image the most energy.

I found it interesting to go back through my images and see how close I had come to creating this type of diagonal line situation.  The first image, below, is one I took less than two weeks ago.

Two hens, one closer and the other further away, one with her nose buried in the new spring grass looking for bugs, and the other heading to her own patch of grass.  I do remember moving myself to be in a diagonal line with these hens, and while the line is not deep (not like train tracks running off in the distance, or a stream running through the woods), the second (blurry) hen actually makes this photo what it is.  Without her, and without the line, the first hen would just be a bird with her head in the grass, too close to the end of my frame.

This next photo (also chicken oriented) was taken at a local farm that runs a community supported agriculture program.  I recently featured one of these photos on my Facebook page, but this one is a more close up approach to the hen houses.

There are a number of lines here, but the predominant one is the diagonal line made by the hen houses.  Again, this was based on where I positioned myself when I took the photo and how I turned my camera.  Even the shadows from the  roof line reinforce the diagonal line of the hen houses.

Finally, there is the image below, which is from a past client photo session.  This is Woody, a distinguished beagle, who mostly wanted to keep his nose to the ground, but graced me with his presence on this large rock for a few moments.

This image, I believe, is closest to what the author of "The Visual Toolbox" is describing in terms of using diagonal lines.  Woody appears at the bottom right of the image, and the diagonal line of the background wooded area starts just shy of the left upper quadrant of the frame.  Do you think this image has energy?

I will definitely be paying close attention to using more diagonal lines in my photography work.  This was an interesting and introspective week for me.  Now to see what others have done with respect to diagonals and lines, start with  Kelly Middlebrooks of Little White Dog Pet Photography in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, then work your way through the blog circle until you find yourself back here again.  Enjoy and have a great weekend!