The Tuesday Composition: Circles

View to a Chill, Greenland
View to a Chill, Greenland

If you like this article, you can now get the book! Joe has expanded the “Tuesday Composition” series into an inspiring new ebook on composition, especially for nature photography. Check it out: The Tuesday Composition.

A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end – and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral. –Maynard James Keenan

In previous weeks, we’ve talked a number of times about how the eye tends to follow along a line. We’ve usually talked about this in the context of the eye traveling from one part of an image to another, but circles are another variation on this theme. By bending a line back around to meet itself, we get a circle (or a similar closed curve). The eye tends to follow that circle, tracing around it one or more times, pulling attention both to the circle itself and whatever it encloses. (more…)

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