Your Photos Look Boring Because You Do THIS Wrong

How would you photograph this lighthouse? Would you, Option one, put the lighthouse on the left side of your frame? Or option two, would you put the lighthouse in the middle of your frame? Or option three, would you put the lighthouse on the right side of your frame? Put your answer in the comments down below. I want to see what you would do. So, if when you're answering a question like this, your first thought is about using the rule of thirds right off the bat, you are wrong. The rule of thirds is the least important rule in photography. Instead, you need to look for something else to make a stunning photo. The number one thing to look for in a photo is a leading line. This is any line that pulls the viewer's eye from the foreground right into the background. So, here's an example from Death Valley National Park where I woke up at sunrise to capture photos of the sand dunes without any footprints on them. See how the ridge line is a high contrast line that starts on the bottom right and curves around the frame, pulling your eye into the background. This leading line is the secret why this photo really works. Because that line captures your attention and pulls your eye up the frame exactly to where I want it to go. And if you want to know more about how you can use leading lines in your own photos, go ahead and hit the subscribe button right now so I can give you more gold nuggets just like this one that will help you take the best photos of your life. Now, here is another less obvious example from Emerald Lake in the Rocky Mountains. See the dock on the left hand side of the frame? It's actually a bridge. And that bridge is a high contrast sharp line that leads the eye right to that restaurant that's on the lake. Now look at the bridge. It isn't actually the only leading line in the photo. Take a look at the ridge line reflected on the water. This is another leading line that brings the attention of your eye right to where I wanted it to go in the frame, which is the reason why I chose to stand at this location instead of using the bridge as a leading line into the restaurant like I did in this photo at Pyramid Lake on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. Leading lines are so powerful because they pull your attention where you want the viewer to look in the frame to create a stunning photo. So, going back to that lighthouse photo, did you choose to place the lighthouse on the left or in the center or on the right hand side of the frame? Here's what I chose when I was out in the field. I chose to put the lighthouse on the left side of the frame because in this position, the shoreline down below becomes a leading line that pulls the eye of the viewer from the foreground around the frame and towards the lighthouse. If the image was framed with the lighthouse on the right side of the frame, it covers up the leading line and fills the foreground with distractions that make it difficult to find one thing to really kind of focus on. So when you are creating your own photos, you want to minimize the number of distractions so that the viewer's eye lands on a single point. And this single point should be the hero of the story that you are telling in the photo. Try doing this test on any photo that you see. When you close your eyes and then you open them and look at a photo, does your eye fall on the main subject or the hero of the story or do you have to force your eye to go there? And if you have to force it, then you need to simplify that composition either by removing distractions or darkening the distractions or brightening up the main subject because the eye of the viewer is always attracted to the brightest part of the photo. Let me know in the comments if you learned anything new.