With a roll of black and white film, I decided to study the function of lines in composition in the (finally) snowy Boston winter.

I had been amazed by the beautiful color rendering of modern films, but I had only tried black and white film once in 2020. It was a trial without any purpose. It occurred to me one day the answer to my long standing question: why black and white film nowadays? The answer is that it is simply a forcing function of narrowing down the tools one can use in their composition study.

Many people argue that film has flexibility in post processing to render an impressively deep dynamic range. Paired with a large format camera, black and white sheet films still produce superior print. While I could believe with the argument, I have used a large film camera, nor sheet films. My experience with 135 films are that, dynamic ranges and resolution are just not what films are good at. My old D800 easily captures the full dynamic range of a film with RAW files.

To me, the lack of color is the stronger reason to shoot black and white film, as it removes the distraction from beautiful or ugly colors, forcing me to think carefully about contrast, lines, patterns, structure and space – those important composition components. So this month, I decided to deliberately select one component to practice – lines.

Leading Line

Leading line is probably the most commonly discussed use of line in composition. This photo is simple in concept – perspective created the converging lines, which leads viewer to see the subject, in which case, it’s the face.

What’s interesting is that, the far end also provided negative space to isolate the subject.

Lines for Depth

Acorn street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston is a very popular photo spot. In this picture, the upward slop and perspective work together to give the sense of depth. I only carried a 35mm lens that day, but it would have given a much deeper sense of depth if this was taken on a wider lens. Regardless, I think this is an example to use perspective lines to give sense of depth, even without a super wide lens.

Perspective lines sometimes can be the interest themselves. Especially when coupled with contract, negative space, or patterns.

Lines form Shape and Relationships

Shapes are formed by lines. If you think the other way, lines can directly form an interesting shape (photo above) or they can extend virtually to work together to create shapes (photo below). Though, lines need to be of similar “weight” to work together, otherwise, they don’t come together as shown below:

The strong backlight behind the roof made the lines on the right extra strong to the point that it “lightens” the clock tower.

Summary

This month, I studied line’s role in composition. In February, I probably will do another black and white roll as the chemical expires in a couple month if I don’t use more of it. I am still debating against myself to focus on contrast or patterns, but either way, focused deliberate practice is both enjoyable and fruitful.