Lines and Patterns
LINES AND PATTERNS
Good for architecture, forests, and scenes with multiple matching elements.
Lines and Patterns is a composition technique that leverages the natural appeal of repeating elements in a scene. By focusing on orderly or repetitive lines and patterns, this technique highlights visual rhythm and harmony, transforming everyday elements into striking compositions. Vertical lines convey height and permanence, horizontal lines evoke calmness and stability, and diagonal or oblique patterns add dynamism and movement. Interrupting the pattern can introduce a focal point, adding intrigue and keeping the viewer engaged. Identify repeating lines or patterns and align them to the vertical or horizontal lines.
What it's good for
Lines and Patterns are excellent for creating visually structured and rhythmic compositions that emphasize repetition and symmetry. This technique works particularly well in architecture, where repeating columns, windows, or staircases can highlight the structure and scale of a building. It is also effective in nature photography, showcasing patterns in waves, tree trunks, or fields of flowers, and in product photography, where orderly arrangements of items like bottles, books, or tools can enhance the composition. By breaking the pattern with a contrasting element, this technique can add an element of surprise, guiding the viewer’s eye and creating a dynamic and engaging photo.
When to use it
Lines and Patterns are ideal when you encounter repeating elements like aligned trees, columns, waves, or even stacked objects like wine bottles. This technique is effective in architectural photography, emphasizing geometric structures; nature photography, highlighting repeating elements like waves or rows of trees; and product photography, showcasing patterns in arrangement. Use it when you want to focus on symmetry or when breaking the pattern will enhance the story or context of the scene.
Steps to apply the artistic composition
Identify the Scene's Main Subject: Look for objects that are similar and aligned in a repeating pattern or orderly fashion.
Find Supporting Elements: Recognize the structure or repetition within the pattern, or locate elements that emphasize or frame the main subject.
Align with Guiding Lines: Arrange the composition to align the patterns with vertical, horizontal, or diagonal guiding lines for emphasis and balance.
Choose the Perspective: Decide whether to highlight vertical patterns for height, horizontal patterns for calmness, or diagonal patterns for dynamism.
Introduce Variation: Consider breaking the pattern with an interruption, like a distinct object, to create a focal point and add interest.
Refine the Composition: Ensure the repeating elements are well-framed, and the pattern enhances the overall structure and visual appeal of the scene.
Overview
Lines and Patterns
Images filled with lines or patterns add something special to your portfolio. It’s one of the Wise Camera app artistic composition rules that shows you have an awareness of your environment, and finding them provides a lot of fun at the same time.
Repetition in patterns is appreciated by photographers and anyone who takes the time to notice it. Our brains love images showing repeated objects nicely aligned in a structured manner because this type of pattern is symmetrical, which feels orderly and safe. Being able to detect patterns is an important part of how people learn and make decisions. Detecting patterns in behavior and circumstances is subconsciously looked for all the time, as this helps people predict what might happen next. This is why seeing repeated lines or patterns in a photograph catches people’s attention and has instant appeal, even as abstract photography.
Lines and patterns often occur in photographs, but usually, that’s in conjunction with the main subject. In this blog post, I’m suggesting that bold lines and textured patterns can be subjects in themselves. Discovering scenes of lines and patterns often happens through serendipity as you go about other types of photography, but when you want to feature them in an image, there are certain factors to keep in mind.
Where to Find Good Lines and Patterns
Lines and patterns are everywhere in nature, on city streets, and throughout industrial areas as well. If you go exploring, you will find them. One of the best places to discover lines and patterns is in your city. Look as you wander through any city, and you’ll soon find textured patterns on buildings, storefronts, and even in construction areas. If nothing grabs your attention after a short while, take another approach and go to the roof of a parking lot or a building observation deck and look down. Now you’ll see patterns of small buildings, repeated shadows throughout the city, and perhaps a series of tiles on adjacent roofs. Lines and patterns can be found in nature when hiking and you find trees of the same species aligned and spaced equally, repeating dune formations across the scene, or cliffs with horizontal layered soil.
Lines can also easily be found in architecture. Huge columns standing solemnly at the front of old banks, rows of windows on hotels, and decorative panels on the sides of modern buildings—they all contain an appealing style of repetition—which provides great opportunities for abstract photos.
An escalator in a shopping mall is a good example of a series of lines that turns into a pattern as well. The horizontal lines forming the steps of the escalator become blocks of rectangles that are repeated all the way up. As a bonus, the handrails and foot guards become a series of lines that guide the eyes to the top of the image. When you face this scene in a shopping center, open the Wise Camera app on your iPhone and tap the screen to rotate the guidelines from vertical to horizontal to find which composition works best in your situation. If you realize later that you became distracted when taking one of your photos and you didn’t line up the scene well enough, use the Wise Photos app to fine-tune the composition.
Industrial areas are one of the most likely places to find man-made patterns. Look at machinery, factory walls, and stacks of pipes—you’ll find an inexhaustible supply of subjects at this type of location. When you are editing some of these images, try a black & white filter to enhance the texture of the pattern. These black & white tones make the viewer focus on the pattern rather than being distracted by any shades of color that may otherwise be present.
How to Make Your Own Patterns
Finding lines and patterns as you are photographing on location is very satisfying, but if you have the urge to create something interesting, you can manipulate situations so that you can photograph everyday objects and turn them into abstract images.
A series of bottles tightly grouped together and photographed from the right angle makes an ideal pattern, especially if you get in so close that the viewer has to take a moment to work out what the objects are in the photograph. Make this abstract image into a story by making sure all of the bottles are new, except for one with an open top. This creates a focal point for the eyes and makes the viewer question the circumstances of the situation. Use the Wise Camera app to line them up perfectly straight and have the open bottle in the exact center of the image to reinforce the symmetry of the shot.
A Final Line or Two
Abstract photography gives you the opportunity to be playful and adventurous with your iPhone. In combination with the Wise Camera app, you can experiment with this composition format to create images filled with dramatic lines and exciting patterns.