Exercise: Horizontal and Vertical Lines

I've chosen different subjects for this exercise such as urban landscape, nature, sculptures or sailing boats. There are plenty of images in our lives in which vertical and horizontal lines are included. So it isn't very difficult to find them; the hard work begins when you have to choose how to reflect them in the composition using different angles of view, different focal lengths... 

Here are some examples, starting with the horizontal lines:

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6

Focal length: 35 mm

Exposure: 1/800 f/5,0

ISO 200. No flash, no tripod.

This is a building detail. The HORIZONTAL lines are created by the window rows. The white windows contrasts with the red background and separate the image into different parts. It's been a tricky image because of the distortion caused by the low angle shot. 

The horizontal windows give a sensation of stability to the picture, like nothing happens in this place, as it were permanent.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6

Focal length: 32 mm

Exposure: 1/1600 f/11

ISO 640. No flash, no tripod.

There are also horizontal lines in landscapes as shown here. The trees in the back create an horizon between the lake and the sky. Here the horizon is placed in the lower third to cause a more dramatic sensation  with the sky. The horizon divides the picture in a dramatic part (the sky) and a calm and quiet part (the lake). There is also another horizontal line in the picture. This is an horizontal curve to be more specific and divides the sand and the water. This curve helps to lead the attention to the rocks and following toward the top you find the grey dramatic clouds.

I've used a small aperture to get a great depth of field and get in focus as much as possible in the picture, because I wanted to attract the attention to the whole image.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6

Focal length: 18 mm

Exposure: 1/1000 f/11

ISO 800. No flash, no tripod.

It is an image of the Moscow Theatre with its beautiful gardens in the front. The roof of the theatre draws an horizontal line which works also as the horizon between the building and the sky. In the front there's a low fence drawing another horizontal lines. There're more horizontal lines created by the separation between the garden squares. 

In this picture there're also two vertical lines leading the attention to the three brown doors in the middle of the frame. These lines give the picture a sense of depth and help to lead our eyes towards the centre of the image while we look around till we reach the doors.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6

Focal length: 34 mm

Exposure: 1/320 f/16

ISO 640. No flash, no tripod.

In this pictute the subject is the statue, so I've chosen its side view to give the picture a static appearance. I've also selected the horizontal framing to accentuate the calming stable impact.

I should have used a larger aperture to limit the depth of field and try to focus the statue and blur the background but I didn't have time to change the camera settings.

Verical lines are very helpful to give dinamism to the picture and help to lead the attention towards a concrete point we want to emphasize. Here are some examples:

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6

Focal length: 36 mm

Exposure: 1/80 f/11

ISO 200. No flash, no tripod.

Trees and in a more specific way, trunks are a good example of vertical lines because it's their nature; so they convey a growth feeling. In this case, I've decided to place a tree in the centre of the picture so I've made it to be cut in two halves and give the shot a symmetrical appearance (not totally but mainly). 

I've used a small aperture to get a high depth of field and to get the farest tree in focus.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6

Focal length: 26 mm

Exposure: 1/200 f/10

ISO 640. No flash, no tripod.

It's a detail of the Sibelius Monument in Helsinki. It's a stainless steel pipe sculpture and Ive managed to place myself below it and shoot upwards. The tricky part of the shot was to calculate the exposure because the contrast was too high, so I had to decide if I wanted to expose for the pipes in the shadow, try to make an average shot or expose for the pipes hit by the sun. So I've made a bracketing: I made three pictures with a 2 stops overexposure and underexposure. Finally the most I liked was the underexposed one, but I've made some fill light, bright and contrast adjustments.

Here the vertical lines are combined with round shadows to make the picture more impressive and giving power and strength to the image.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4-5,6

Focal length: 70 mm

Exposure: 1/4000 f/4

ISO 500. No flash, no tripod.

I've seen this sailing ship and got a little bit impressed by its  masts. It was the only ship with three masts in the whole quay and its heigth was considerable and I've used these vertical lines to suggest that idea. So I've used the vertical framing to accentuate this height.

Here I should have used a wider angle to get the shot but I only had the telephoto and 70 mm was the widest angle, so I was limited a little because the mast are cut at the top of the image. I think a 50 mm lens would have worked much better in this case.

Camera body: Nikon d90

Lens: Nikkor 18-55 mm f/3,5-5,6

Focal length: 22 mm

Exposure: 1/400 f/16

ISO 640. No flash, no tripod.

In the picture above I've used these cilindrical structures and the chains as vertical lines to suggest the idea of strength in the picture. If I've chosen a bigger apeture and have taken out of focus the background the picture would have worked better but I was so tired that I didn't pay much attention to it.

Conclusion: 

Horizontal and vertical lines are easy to find in real life, so they are easy to photography. We can use horizontal lines to suggest calm and stability or permanence. Or we can use vertical lines to accentuate the height, give strength and power to a building, a sculpture... Also lines are appropriate to divide the frame into halves, thirds... or to lead the attention towards our subject.