Lesson 22. Lines: Patterns

One of the tools graphic designers use so well is the repeated element. They create a visual echo and draw greater attention to the shape itself. Patterns are lines or shapes that repeat themselves more than just a couple times, and they’re important as a visual tool because our eyes are drawn to them. We like rhythm, and patterns can create that in a photograph. Because patterns draw our eye, we find them interesting, and that can be reason enough to learn to see them. But rarely is pattern enough to create a compelling photograph. Without something more, our images of patterns aren’t interesting photographs, just photographs of interesting patterns.

Fuji XE-1, 155mm, 1/4000 @ f/4.5, ISO 800
These antelope on Kenya’s Maasai Mara create a rhythm, like a visual echo, that draws the eye both to them and into the frame, to the Land Rover and two more antelope in the background.

Canon 5D, 32mm, 1/30 @ f/5.6, ISO 200
The broken pattern here, using contrast, is a way of isolating one element while drawing our attention to the pattern itself.

But if you add a juxtaposition or break the pattern in some way, that pattern is not only interesting but serves a visual purpose as well, not unlike the setup to a joke, which is little more than verbally creating a pattern or expectation, then zigging when people think you’re going to zag. The more certain the audience is that you’re going to zag, the funnier the zig is likely to be. I’m not suggesting we use patterns to make our photographs funny, though there’s no reason not to. I’m just saying that the stronger the pattern, the stronger the expectation that the pattern will continue to repeat, and when it doesn’t, that contrast has greater visual mass and will captivate our attention. If that break in the pattern is a living thing, or a human element, we’re bound to care even more.

Looking for patterns is not so much the point as looking for breaks in the pattern.