03.07 Eye-lines

The strongest implied line is the eye-line - the direction which someone is looking at. The eye-line owes its insistence to three factors:

1. the high visual weight of the human face;
2. the high visual weight of the eyes in the human face; and
3. the Gestalt theory of Continuity.

Simply put, we want to see what others are looking at, because what interests someone else might well interest us too.

If eye-lines are present in a composition, they will nearly always be important structural elements because of their hard-to-dilute inherent power of directing the viewing eye. Eye-lines take two common forms:

• Direct eye-contact with the viewer
  The observer has direct first-person involvement with the image. This kind of eye-line is the highest attractant.
• Looking at another object
  Used to point out an object of interest, the observer has a third-person involvement. If the eye-line is directed at something out of frame, this introduces ambiguity which creates either delay or a sense of suspension.