Tip 22 - Find Repeat Patterns
A big mistake many of us make is to include too many things in the background of a photo. They distract your audience’s attention from your main subject and story telling. An easy solution is to put your subject in front of a clean background.
However, this “clean” background doesn’t have to be blank. I briefly mentioned simple repeat patterns as one of the “less is more composition tip”. Here are more examples.
Next time when you visit a museum, a palace or a landmark with unique architectural features, try to find repeat lines and patterns. When they are lined up in good balance, they look more pleasant or even “cleaner” to your viewers.
For example, churches are among one of my favorite architectures. Of course you can’t photograph inside all the churches, but if you can, you will sure be able to get some amazing patterns. The images above and below are from the same church in Iceland, you can see it’s easy to find repeat patterns from different angles.
How about outdoors? You can certainly find simple or repeat patterns with trees, rocks, leaves, flowers, rice paddies, mountain ranges. As long as you are willing to look and see, I bet you will find them.
Did you find the relation between the above two photos? They were photographed at the same place, just different time, light, composition, and subject. But they have the same repeat patterns of the mountain ranges.
How about indoors? Did you see stairs? Door frames? Window frames? Shelves? Blinds? Or even their shadows?
Even better, these patterns do not have to be background. They can be your main subjects! See below examples.
Go back to Composition Tips Chapter
