The exercise requires me to take 4 photographs where diagonals feature strongly
Image 1
An old railway goods carriage in an unusual location in the middle of a village with office buildings around it. This carriage has many diagonal steel bracings including the white painted W which itself is made of 4 diagonal strokes. In addition I've made the shape of the carriage appear to diagonal lines by my camera position using converging lines caused by perspective of the left side of the carriage being further away from the camera than the right side.
Image 2
Here I've used perspective and depth to creating the diagonals of the pathway in a small deserted shopping mall. The closed shutters and the wooden roof covering the path all have diagonals in this image. The eye naturally follows the path direction creating a feeling of movement within the image.
Image 3
The left to right upward gradient of the path and the handrails create strong diagonals in this image and again the position and angle of the camera creates converging diagonal lines in the path itself. The path and rails act as a visual pathway that takes the eyes across the image left to right and right to left creating a sense of movement.
Image 4
I've revisited a location I used previously for vertical lines though this time the hay bales are now removed. A different position this time for the camera creates strong multiple diagonal lines in parallel together with the diagonals of the hedges enclosing the light coloured field.
Exercise Learnings'
a) Diagonal lines create a sense of movement and direction within in an image. The angle of the diagonal lines compared to the horizontal line of the top/bottom of the frame will determine the amount of energy implied within the image
b) Diagonal lines can appear naturally as in image 1, can be created through the change in gradient of terrain, by the position of the viewer to the scene as in images 3 and 4 and also by the angle of the camera to the scene, particularly in image 3 where this has created converging lines in the pathway.
c) Converging diagonal lines can be easily be created with paths, roadways etc the travel from the viewers position toward the horizon, image 2 is a good example of this. The eye naturally travels along this "pathway" and through the image; this can create a sense of movement.
d) Parallel lines reinforce the diagonal movement created in Image 4 and though these lines will not converge the diagonal movement is re-inforced with the parallel lines.
e) Often we see horizontal and vertical lines as being obvious and in our everyday lives e.g. tables, table legs, chairs, building structures etc. Diagonal lines are not so frequently seen but exist either naturally or can be created simply by a change of position or camera angle
f) When I first considered how I would approach this exercise I started thinking about where I would see diagonal lines and came out short of ideas. Instead for the first 3 images I simply took a walk around a local town and once I stopped looking hard to find them I found they came to me in such an easy way. I guess they were there all along but for a while I was looking but not seeing. This is something I've began to learn how to do so far following the exercises within this course. When we "take in" a scene or a view we may comment that we like it, it perhaps it invokes a specific feeling but don't understand why. Understanding how lines work within in image helps me now understand how these elements work within an image, a view or scene to create this.
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