Look at this image for a little while:

Typically I want to go with the color and where the action is. In this image the action and color is in the top third of the image. Why then would I devote more than half of the image to the bottom part of the image? Before we explore the answer to that question, does the image work for you as it is? I actually like the image a lot, for me it works rather well. Why do I think so?

          Had the rock in the foreground been just one rock with no lines or interesting shapes or textures this image would have been a total failure. What makes this image work for me and the reason why I was drawn to compose the image as it is are the lines and the texture. Curved lines are dymanic and interesting. The horizontal line curves up pointing to the sun. The line coming in from the right also stops underneath the sun. The lines work together with the sun. The lines break up the vast rock section. They add interest.

          The second reason I was drawn to this composition is the texture. The rock in the foreground has lots of course texture. It creates an interesting base for the image. The viewer's eyes are lured back to the foreground to explore the texture and the patterns in the rock. The sun pulls the eyes back up to itself, and so the viewer's eyes go back and forth. This is what we want to create. We don't want the viewer to leave the image. We don't want the viewer to only look at the image from side to side (flat image). We want them to look into the image, to be drawn into the scene. This is exactly what this image does. The foreground and the background pull the viewer's attention back and forth.

          As landscape photographers we should play with lines, shapes, and texture more often.