Category Archives: Patterns in Nature

Patterns are everywhere. There are patterns in the way the light passes through the blinds on your window and plays across the floor. There are patterns in the cracks on the sidewalk you walk every day to your car, school, or work. There are patterns in what you do, the rhythm of your walk and movement, the music you listen to, even the voices around you.

Finding the patterns in nature means opening yourself up to nature’s design. To see the wonder in the curve of a leaf or twist of a branch. To spot the dots and lines on the back of a spider or the colorful arrangement of features on a bird.

This series of articles is from our book and workshop, “Bows and Flows of Angel Hair: Photographing the Patterns in Nature”, and is designed to help the beginner to intermediate photographer learn more about the patterns found in nature and how to photograph them. We’ll talk about camera equipment, lenses, tripods, depth of field, selective focus, closeup photography techniques, landscape, wildlife, and help you explore the patterns in nature.

Water Droplets on Sheet Web

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Water droplets on sheet web - photography by Brent VanFossen.

Just as there are many types of spiders, there are many types of webs. A favorite of ours is the sheet web.

Lying flat across plants and grasses, Brent and I are impressed by these diligent web makers as they work on the horizontal rather than vertical. Our front “yard” filled with knick-knick, Oregon Grape, and sahlal, native Pacific Northwest plants, is a haven for sheet web-making spiders.

In the fall, the rain comes down, drenching these sturdy webs with water drops. Brent was able to get in close to capture the droplets without disturbing the web.

I love the patterns, the wet texture, and the lovely colors of nature in this photograph. Made into a puzzle, this one would be a tough image to put together.

Backlighting Devil’s Club Overhead

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Devils club leaves photographed by Lorelle VanFossen backlit in the forest.

Traveling to Seattle, a friend and I went to the John Bastyr School for one of their health and herbal festivals. A nature walk through the forest next to the campus intrigued me. It was incredibly informative, discussing how to use plants in the wilderness for medical treatments and health.

The Pacific Northwest forest was dappled with sunlight and the treacherous Devils Club hung over our heads at one point in trail. I worked around the group trying to get a good angle on the plant to capture the details with the strong backlighting.

The Devil’s Club is one that I’ve run into since a child digging around the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and trust me, this is one you do not want to stumble into. Called the Devil’s Club or Walking Stick, it can grow up to 16 feet (5 meters) tall in rainforests and damp environments to which Western Washington is well equipped. Spines are found not only on the stems but the leaves, making it a painful experience to touch in any way, even brush against.

According to our guide, Native Americans used Devil’s Club for medicine to treat diabetes, tumors, chapped lips, and tumors. It can also be used as an analgesic, though it isn’t as strong as traditional aspirin. It can be used in herbal teas and he said that they ate it as food. He didn’t clarify which part they ate, from the red fruits that form in clusters off stems that look like clubs, or from the leaves or root.

For me, this is a plant I’ve endured most of my life, having spent too many hours pulling its little thorn-like spines from by arms and legs and out of my dogs. Still, it is a magnificent examples of the unusual in the world. A plant I think of when I imagine what plant life was like during the dinosaur times.

Flash Isolates Natural Subject

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Dried Thistle phtographed with flash, thus the background goes black. Photography by Lorelle VanFossen.

This dried thistle head in the Painted Hills of Oregon caught my attention with its textures and lines. I’ve always loved thistles, alive and vital with their fluffy tops, and dried out cone-like structures of mystery and pattern.

To isolate this thistle, I used flash to force the background to go to black. The flash also dove into the textures highlighting the dimensional quality of the seed head. The black background brings out the delicate curves of the plant.

To create this yourself, get close to your subject and use full flash. I recommend putting your camera on a tripod to maximize the sharp focus of the subject.

If the subject like this thistle is moving in the breeze, just be patient and wait for it to pause. The flash allows the camera to photograph at higher speeds, but you want all the odds on your side.

Exploring Painted Hills in Oregon

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A few years ago, my mother and I went on a genealogy romp through Oregon trying to track down the records of my family. We swung out into Eastern Oregon to one of my favorite nature parks, Painted Hills. I’ve photographed it for many years. Here are a few of the choice images from that trip to revisit this odd geological spot where the winds and rains have worn away the topsoil to reveal amazing colors of the minerals in the ground.

painted hills - vertical patterns 2 - lorelle vanfossen
painted hills - trail proceed no further sign - lorelle vanfossen
painted hills - patterns 6 - lorelle vanfossen
painted hills - patterns 7 - lorelle vanfossen
painted hills - motor home in scenic - lorelle vanfossen
painted hills - hills against grasses - lorelle vanfossen
painted hills - scenic 1 - lorelle vanfossen

Cherry Tree Blossoms, Seattle Arboretum

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Cherry Blossoms, photograph by Lorelle VanFossen

The Seattle Arboretum is a glorious place to wander year around, but in the spring, the rows and rows of flowering trees are wonders to behold.

I often led many nature photography tours in and around Seattle’s most famous park, a long green belt that starts near the University of Washington and Museum of History and Industry, along the ship canals between Lake Union and Lake Washington, and runs for 230 acres along the Lake Washington waterfront, all the way to Madison Park area.

This was taken many years ago during one of the first photo excursions I led to the Arboretum. I had set up my camera for the participants and students to see how they could control the background by using the blossoms of the tree itself to frame the petals of interest, creating a blur of pastels. Along the way, I snapped a few pictures as teaching slides, but this particular one fascinated me.

This image has been used on book covers, posters, note cards, and just as artwork in addition to it holding a special place in many of my photography workshops and classes. It makes a great teaching point, but it is also just lovely to look at.

Just reminds me that you never know when you press the shutter, what the future of that image will bring.

Patterns in Nature: Beetle Camouflage on Tree

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Beetle camouflage

We love looking for patterns in nature to photograph and nature provides no end of opportunities. This beetle was almost passed by as it blends so perfectly in with the tree bark. It’s near perfect as camouflage.

To photograph patterns in nature, specifically subjects that resemble other more family subjects or those that melt away into their environment, you have to have what Brent’s family called a “good eye.” You have to pay attention to details, be very patient, and be open to discovery. It’s a child-like detective adventure, trying to bring order to the chaos of shapes and lines and designs around us. Our brain wants to force coherent images out of random or abstract designs, finding letters of the alphabet in moss and worm patterns on leaves, faces in flowers, or tree bark on bugs.

Recently, my in-laws updated their kitchen with new tiles, sink, and counter top. They searched and searched for months to find the right design in the stone counter and finally decided upon a green, blue, black, and gray pattern with lines of white running through it with the occasional swirl in its bend. It’s beautiful and very unusual. Fascinated with the decision process, I asked them why they chose this one. My mother-in-law explained that while it didn’t have the exact colors they wanted, dad liked it because it looked like the earth from a satellite perspective.

As our eyes turn out to the stars and back towards this tiny planet we call home, the range of recognizable imagery we can impose upon nature expands. Suddenly shapes and forms in nature look more like the horse head nebular or the cat’s eye galaxy, or the view of our planet’s surface from hundreds of miles into space.

Maybe someday this won’t be a beetle that resembles the bark it rests on, but an alien on the surface of a planet in a far off distant corner of the galaxy.

Patterns in Nature: New Growth on Evergreens

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End of a pine tree, new growth, photograph by Brent VanFossen

In the spring, while everyone is looking at the spring flowers, I’m looking at trees, running my hands over the feather softy new growth on the tips of the evergreen trees.

I love how dark green trees suddenly seem to flower with the light green “blooms” on their tips. Within a few months, this slippery and silky ends will become brittle hard and spiky, keeping shadow on its rough bark during the heat of summer, reaching out to catch any cooling breeze that passes by, then pushing away the weight of the snow on its branches in winter. Pine needles are part of the evergreen tree’s defense system.

I pointed out this new tree growth to my future husband, Brent VanFossen, while we were on a photographic field trip when he was still a student and I was the teacher. We were working on patterns in nature, specifically lines and shapes in the basic photography workshop, and this new tree growth was a perfect example of a tiny equiangular spiral, a pattern few people every notice until they get really close up.

Brent used his 200mm with an extension tube to get in really close, and bounced a little white bounce light from his diffuser/refector to fill in the shadows and make the spiral pop out. This was done, of course, on a stable tripod as a show shutter speed was required to get the maximum depth of field for the tiny end of the branch and needles.

All these many years later, this continues to be one of my favorite peaceful photographs. It’s simple and I never get tired of looking at it.

The Beautification of a Danelion

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dandelion with purple foreground from another flower blurred, photograph by Brent VanFossen

In our series on Background Magic, we talk about how to do this, to blur the foreground of your subject by holding a leaf or flower petal in front of it, close to the camera lens. It becomes a blur, almost a transparent wash of color around the subject.

Brent and I were photographing wild flowers on an island in the Puget Sound San Juans, experimenting with many different effects when we took this. Dandelions are everywhere in the Puget Sound area, dotting the landscape with their tight yellow heads which turn into white golf balls when they go to seed in the late summer. We challenged each other to photograph “boring” flowers in new ways and Brent came up with this winner.

A Reflection of Trees

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trees and garden in pond reflection, bellingrath, alabama, by lorelle vanfossen

A select few artists and photographers specialized in working with reflections, images captured in lakes, rivers, ponds, and puddles, then turning them upside for display, making what would normally be seen upside down be right side up, a portrait of abstract Monet-style photography.

This particular image I took in spring at the Bellingrath Plantation and Gardens, along one of the many ponds and estuaries of the slough coming off the Gulf Coast and mixing into the fresh waters of the Dog River and other waterways around Mobile, Alabama.

I loved the stark trees in the water, the blue sky, the flowering azaleas, all came together for a powerful reflection image. I underexposed a bit, playing around with capturing the darker tones of the image, and this was the best of the lot.

The Stack of Old Books

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stack of used books, by Lorelle VanFossen

Among the man-made patterns I love to photograph are books, specifically old books. I love the pattern of them stacked, their cover jackets of different colors, patterns, and textures, especially the older books with their leather and paper bindings.

I think of the hard work that went into designing the colorful covers, the care taken to find the perfect font and collection of images to grab the attention of the passerby and leap off the bookstore shelf into their hands.

As an author, I think of the powerful impact seeing my first book cover on a book that wasn’t self published. I couldn’t believe it. After all the years of self-doubt at being called an author, here I was, a published author. Joy filled me, immediately doused by humility and responsibility. With this book in my hand, I now had to be more than I was. I had to be a real writer. I had to live up to whatever an author was.

This didn’t last long as thirty seconds later I was asked for my first book autograph from Chris and Gorgeous Cree. I signed a book to both of them. They laughed and said that I had to sign two books, one for each of them. I was humiliated, having never thought about autographing my own books, and a part of me wanted to save every single one of them so why give two to a married couple when all they needed was one.

I tucked that book into my bag and signed two fresh copies for them, totally three autographed copies in the first two minutes of experiencing my own book. I still have that original first copy, that’s how stingy and protective I am of my first book. I use it as my proof and edit version. It’s been sliced into individual pages and stuck in a notebook binder and every other page has red marks on it with edits and corrections. I’m working on it right now for the version 2 due out hopefully by the end of the year.

To me, these books represented all those hopes and dreams the authors had. They were all in a pile at a swamp meet market in Mobile, Alabama, looking like they could fall over at any moment. That’s fairly symbolic to me.

One of my favorite quotes by the outrageous Quentin Crisp is:

It’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, ‘Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.’ By then, pigs will be your style.

When I look at these books and my own inadequacies in getting my second book out the door, I often wonder if I’m the ballet dancer of the pig farmer.

Rows of Tulips – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

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Skagit Valley Tulip Festival rows of pink and yellow, photograph by Lorelle VanFossen

Rows of tulips at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

There were several intriguing things about this composition that compelled me to take it.

First, the leading rows moving into the distance towards the cars. Then the cars at the end of the line. It’s like a strange parking lot in the flowers.

Second, the building and mounds of compost in the background. They echo each other and look like mountains, which would be in the distance if the overcast sky permitted.

I like the lines, the rows, curves of the cars, then triangles of the building and mounds. It’s a busy image, but somehow, it still appeals to me.

Patterns in Nature: Spiral Kale

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kale ornamental bellingrath garden mobile alabama lorelle vanfossen 2006

We are always on the lookout for fascinating patterns in nature to photograph. This beautiful ornamental kale at the Bellingrath Plantation near Mobile, Alabama, is a wonderful spiral pattern. I positioned the center of the plant in the traditional rule of thirds corner and the whole image popped off the viewfinder in my camera.

Photographing a deep, lacy, and complex patterned plant can be a challenge when it comes to focus points and depth of field. I choose to go with the maximum depth of field to capture as much of the lacy leaves as possible, carefully positioning my camera parallel to the plant, directly over it. Some diffused light from the sky and a careful bouncing of the gold reflector into the center, and I’m very pleased with the results.

More helpful articles on photographing nature, plants, and patterns, see:

Yellow and Purple Tulip Closeup, Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

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Tulip, yellow and purple, closeup with water droplets by Lorelle VanFossen

I love the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and have many years of photographs from its bountiful rainbow of tulips. This one is from the 2007 festival, a very gray sky and wet few weeks.

We always bring our full camera gear, different tripods, lenses, everything we can to get the landscape views as well as the close in macro photography perspective.

I liked this purple and yellow tulip dripping with rain water, the patterns in the petals and veins of color. I knelt down on a knee pad with my camera upside down on the tripod to get low to the ground, moving in as close as I dared. I wanted to get in closer, but the heat of my body in the freezing cold morning created a slight breeze, shaking the tulip, so I zoomed in from about three feet to fill the frame. Even then, it was hard to get the maximum depth of field in the low light while maintaining enough for focus. I took a dozen pictures of this and this is the best of the collection.

I look at this picture and see pictures within pictures, telling me there was more that could have been told in this flower. I see that I could have zoomed in and focused on any of the specific pattern details, the raindrops, or the fascinating stem that is so smooth moving from stem to petal. Digitally, I could zoom in and crop these, but the lack of true sharpness in the original makes these tough for that kind of magnification.

Still, thoughts like these always serve to remind me to work harder, in spite of the cold and wet, to really explore a photographic subject and look beyond the surface pretty.

Behind the Scenes: Lacy Trees in Winter

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lacy snow covered trees, gaston, oregon, by Lorelle VanFossen

Winter is one of my favorites, and trees coated in snow is top of the list.

I captured these ancient trees along the pond at the farm in Gaston, Oregon, where we stayed the first two years back in the Pacific Northwest. Their twisted and gnarled branches were perfect for creating a lacy effect with the heavy dusting of snow frozen to their branches.

As with all snowy white photographs, I would have normally overexposed the image to whiten the snow, but I chose to underexpose the image to bring out the darker subtle tones of the branches.

It’s a creative decision to focus on the white of the snow or the dark of the branches and underground. Bracket across then choose from which image you like.

This was a long exposure due to the low light in the snowy weather, thus a tripod was critical to capture this scene.