Leading Lines and Corners Per Brian Rueb of Redding, Ca

Okay, I joined the local photography club last Thursday night.  It was fun, they covered several different things, but the one that stuck out to me was about the "corners" of your photograph.  Brian Rueb a landscape photographer around here was the judge the monthly photo contest.  All the images were on these boards and he critiqued most of them in front of us.  One very interesting thing he said, to me anyhow, was that it is good to use the corners of your viewfinder/picture.  This will cause the eye to follow an invisible diagonal line to your subject of interest.  Here is an example of what I am talking about.

My point of interest is the pink and brown balls in the center of the picture.  This necklace actually goes all the way down to the bottom right corner and up to the upper left corner.  I did this on purpose to get the viewers eyes to follow that leading diagonal line up to the focused center of the necklace. 

This second picture I tried to process the same way much later, but forgot all that I did...so, just pretend they had the same color values, etc.  Anyhow, on this one, there is a diagonal line on the bottom right, but it doesn't really lead to my center interest, those pink/brown balls.  Then in the upper left there is a different necklace on the diagonal, but again not pointing straight to the center interest of the picture.

I personally like the first one better...seems more balanced to me.  Strange, both pretty much the same picture, but just that little tweak makes a big difference to me.

Just food for thought! :)