Getting into Patterns and Repetition in Photos
So, I decided to really focus on patterns and repetition the other day. Wasn’t really planned, just kinda happened. I was walking around downtown, waiting for my wife, and started noticing stuff. Like, really noticing. The way bricks were lined up, the grates on the sidewalk, even the windows on a big office building.
Grabbed my camera – just my usual one, nothing fancy. Didn’t even mess with settings much at first. Point and shoot, mostly. My first few shots were… well, boring. Just flat pictures of bricks. Like, yeah, it’s a pattern, so what?
Then I thought, maybe it’s not just what you shoot, but how. I started looking for ways to make it less flat.
- Angles: Tried getting down low, looking up along a row of columns. That worked better. Made the repetition feel like it was going somewhere.
- Light and Shadow: Waited for the sun to hit this metal staircase just right. The shadows created their own pattern on top of the metal steps. That was a cool moment.
- Breaking the Pattern: Found this wall of identical windows, but one had a weird curtain pulled halfway. Shot that. Suddenly the pattern wasn’t just a pattern, it had a little story.
I spent maybe an hour just doing this. Walked over to a park later. Found patterns there too, but different kinds. Rows of park benches, the way the paving stones were laid out, even a bunch of bikes locked up in a rack. It’s funny, once you start looking for this stuff, you see it everywhere.
Some things I tried shooting:
- Brick walls (obviously)
- Stacks of tires at a garage
- Seats in an empty bus stop shelter
- Chain link fences (getting close up makes cool patterns)
- Rows of books on an outdoor stall
- Stairs, lots of stairs
Didn’t get amazing, prize-winning photos every time. Definitely not. Lots of deletions happened. But it was a good exercise. Made me slow down and look properly, instead of just snapping away at obvious things. It’s about finding the rhythm in everyday stuff. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but the process of looking is what counts, I guess. Got a couple I actually liked in the end, especially the staircase one with the shadows. Felt good.
