with Lorelle and Brent VanFossen

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.

The Art of a Moth

Brent has a beautiful eye for capturing the essence of a photograph. This moth is perfectly framed on the pine needled covered ground at Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. Moths are amazing. There are over 160,000 species of months, nearly ten times the number of butterflies, so sayeth Wikipedia. We love photographing moths. […]

Water Droplets on Sheet Web

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, […]

Backlighting Devil’s Club Overhead

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 […]

Flash Isolates Natural Subject

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 […]

Exploring Painted Hills in Oregon

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 […]

Cherry Tree Blossoms, Seattle Arboretum

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 […]

Patterns in Nature: Beetle Camouflage on Tree

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 […]

Patterns in Nature: New Growth on Evergreens

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 […]

The Beautification of a Danelion

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 […]

A Reflection of Trees

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 […]

The Stack of Old Books

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 […]

Rows of Tulips – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

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 […]

Patterns in Nature: Spiral Kale

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 […]

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival: A Weed

We call them “weeds,” a different colored tulip in a batch of other colors. This was taken at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in Washington State near Mt. Vernon, one of the largest tulip festivals in the world.

Yellow and Purple Tulip Closeup, Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

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 […]