I remember when I first started really trying to get into street photography. My shots were… well, they were just snaps, mostly. People walking, cars, buildings. Nothing really holding them together. I’d see other folks’ pictures, these amazing compositions, and mine just felt flat. Someone mentioned looking for patterns, and I thought, “Yeah, easy enough. Bricks, stripes, whatever.” Boy, was I wrong.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t see patterns. The world’s full of ’em, right? But getting them to look good in a photo? That was a whole other can of worms. My first attempts were a disaster. I’d spot a row of windows and just point and shoot. Looked boring. I’d see a cool shadow from a fence, take the picture, and it just looked like a dark blob.
So, I had to get serious, or at least, more deliberate.
My Pattern Hunting Journey
First thing, I just started walking. A lot. With my camera, sure, but mostly just looking. I left my fancy lens at home, usually just a simple prime. Made me move my feet more. I’d pick a neighborhood and just wander. My goal wasn’t even to take amazing photos at first, but just to train my eye.
I started noticing stuff I’d walked past a hundred times:
- The way sunlight cut through scaffolding, making these repeating squares of light and dark.
- How a line of parked bicycles created a rhythm.
- The way people queued up, forming a human pattern.
- Even cracks in the pavement sometimes, if the light hit ’em right.
It was slow going. I’d fill up memory cards with a lot of junk. My “keeper” rate was abysmal. My wife would ask, “How was your photo walk?” and I’d just grunt. Frustrating, you know? Because I could see the potential, but capturing it was like trying to catch smoke.
Then, I started to think less about just the pattern itself, and more about how it interacted with something else. A stark geometric pattern of a building was okay, but it got way more interesting when a person in a bright red coat walked past, breaking it. Or when a lone pigeon landed in the middle of a repeating tile design.
I also realized I was often too far away, or too close. I started to play with perspective. Getting low, getting high (when possible, safely, of course!), trying different angles. It’s not just about spotting a pattern, it’s about framing it so it tells a bit of a story, or at least makes your eye move around in an interesting way.
Light became my best friend and worst enemy. A good pattern could disappear in flat light. But on the flip side, boring surfaces could come alive with strong sidelight, creating shadows that formed new patterns. I started paying way more attention to the time of day. Golden hour wasn’t just for pretty landscapes, lemme tell ya.
The Click Moment
The real change happened when I stopped hunting for obvious, textbook patterns and started feeling the rhythm of the street. It’s hard to explain. It was less “There’s a pattern!” and more “Hmm, this feels organized” or “This feels chaotic in an interesting way.”
I remember one day, I was watching this wall with peeling paint. Layers of different colors. Not a neat pattern, but a pattern of decay, of history. And then someone walked by whose shirt had a similar, faded, multi-layered look. Boom! That was it. The connection. It wasn’t just about visual repetition, it was about thematic repetition too, sometimes.
My photos still aren’t gonna win any massive awards, probably. But they feel more like mine now. They have a bit more thought behind them. Focusing on patterns, even when I fail to capture them well, has made me a much more observant person, not just in photography, but in general. I see the little details everywhere now.
So yeah, “street photography patterns.” It’s not a magic bullet. It’s a practice. It’s about training your eye, being patient, and taking a whole lot of bad photos until you start getting the good ones. And then, you realize you’re just scratching the surface. But it’s a fun scratch, I guess. Keeps me going out there, anyway.
