Opening to Pattern

Ladders along a wall at the Rocks in Bethlehem

Seedling fur trees
ready for planting,
Rocks Estate
in Bethelehem.

Cedar shakes alive with last year's growth awaiting spring.

“One day passes and another comes along, and everything happens the same. But basically, we are so afraid of the brilliance coming at us, and the sharp experience of our life, that we can’t even focus our eyes.” Chogyam Trungpa in True Perception

Are there times we are afraid to open our eyes? Do we see everything as the same, as one giant, boring pattern? Each element of the pattern has a sameness and repetitiveness that we impose upon it because if we truly saw each person, object, and element as special it would overwhelm us into the brilliance of our lives.

Yet every person, object and element IS unique. No two people look alike (even for identical twins as the years mark their faces and bodies in different ways). No two people feel, experience, love, approach living the same.

Here are photographs I took recently that reflect a repetitive quality. Yet, if we look closely we will see the multifaceted quality of each and every object.

Try seeing in this way for an hour or a day. Use your camera on a walkabout to find pattern and then be still enough to be awed by the differences and let the brilliance of that seeing in.

Texture in Photography

The origin of the word "texture" comes from Old and Middle English and means interwoven or interweaving. Texture, in photography, lends an image excitement and contrast. It invokes the tactile quality of the world and helps engage our body and senses.

The challenge is that photography is two-dimensional and so when observing the world within a frame we must look for those objects that provoke our interest and ideally showcase more than one texture.

We may walk in nature and select a scene with different foliage, needles and leaves, smooth bark and rough bark, knobby or slashed. Water may be ruffled by the wind to the right and smooth like glass to the left. Reflections on water may be rough in one spot and smooth in another. The opportunities are endless if we keep our eye open to all possibilities.

Add texture to portraits through background, clothing, light. Imagine a baby’s smooth skin against a woolen blanket. An intermingling of smooth, soft, hard, rough, creamy, becomes a delight to the eye, mind and heart of the photographe, and provides a joyous meeting place for all who look at it.

captured in the smooth glass of a lake

pebbly mountains jut into blue azure sky

and rough boulders mark passage for the eye

Expanding the subjects we photograph.

We have so many preconceptions of what we should photograph.  It must be beautiful.  It must fit our image of nature or people.  However, we can think beyond our usual models of what to photograph and be open to everyting we come across.  If it attracts our eye shoot it!  The two photographs here were taken one day on a trip to an antique shop.  It was great fun really opening my eyes and seeing  objects which I've really seen before.   You may wish to do the same.