Photographic Designs in Nature

Colors
The world is a kaleidoscope of colors - some bright, vivid, neon and dazzling. Some may be soft, subtle and pastel. Colors can capture the attention and hold us with their intensity or move us to tears with their strong emotional qualities. There are seven basic colors (plus black and white) and each affects us differently and represents a variety of symbols.
Red : Red immediately attracts and demands attention. It is used to represent an emergency: fire, ambulances, red cross, blood. Emotionally, it is an exciting color, vibrant and strong, hot and powerful. It radiates energy and vitality.
Orange : As a mixture of red and yellow, orange has the qualities of both colors. Orange is used to symbolize fire and the sun.
Yellow : A bright and warm color, often representative of vitality, yellow attracts attention in its brightest tones. Yellow represents the sun.
Green : Green is the color of spring, grasses, and leaves. It symbolizes nature, growth, and youth. Emotionally, it is a cool and tranquil color, or it may be seen as a healthy, lush color.
Blue : Blue is a cool color. It represents the sky and the water around us. Emotionally, blue is a quiet and peaceful color, but may also be interpreted as lonely. Photographing in shade or late evening or pre-dawn can add a blue color cast to your images.
Indigo – Violet : These colors are commonly referred to as magenta, purple, and lavender. Purple symbolizes power, royalty and richness, possibly because of its rareness in nature. It is found in flowers and leaves, precious stones and in the setting sun on occasion.
White : Often thought of as the absence of color, white is associated with cleanliness, pureness, freshness and innocence. It symbolizes pure light or snow, or clouds, brightness and hope.
Black : Black is a very strong color. We associate black with the dark, shadows, with the unknown and our fear of the unknown. It represents a sense of lifelessness and is found in coal, burned wood, night, and shadows. It can imply mystery, evil, or a threatening and ominous feeling.

Branching
When you first look at a forest, it may seem to be a random tangle of branches and leaves. Continue looking and you will notice some regularity. Follow the path of the trunk of a single tree as it moves upward. Soon a branch will protrude out from the side, then another and another. From that branch will be smaller branches, then smaller ones, leading to twigs and eventually to leaves. Branching is again nature using the shortest possible line to get the greatest amount of coverage.

Fractals
In the mid 1970's, Benoit Mandelbrot, a mathematician at IBM, developed a geometry that could analyze and quantify nature's crags, whorls, billows and branching. He called this new branch of mathematics fractal geometry, taking the name from the Latin adjective fractus, which means "fractured, fragmented or broken". Since then, scientists have used fractals to define order in natural structures that defy analysis.
To fit into this new category of mathematics, a shape must have what Mandelbrot called self similarity. The details must look much like the larger picture. A small part of a cloud has the same kind of swirl or texture as the larger part. Look close or look far away and feel no sensation of size. They all look like clouds.

Texture
Textures give depth and "feeling" to a subject. They are accentuated on flat surfaces by the use of side light and shadow. Look for the play of shadows on surfaces. Watch for the direction of the light and how it creates shapes and lines and forms and adds dimension to your subject.