The Intrigue Of Aerial Patterns

When we take photographs from a distance, the fine details are often less striking than their patterns, shapes, and repetitions.

While that’s true of ground-based photographs, I think it’s even more the case in aerial images.

Take these interlocked “H”s. They draw our eyes and stimulate our curiosity. They’re a bit of fun, inviting us to wonder just what we’re looking at.

As it happens, they represent a metal roof at the Outer Harbour Marina. What intrigued me, as the drone flew nearby was the symmetrical geometry, the repetitive patterns, and the cheerful color, both sunlit and shadowed.

As I worked with the image in editing, I knew it would be fun to share it with others.

Like the rooftop, the patterns that most delight me are often abstract or ambiguous. But by comparison to the rigid straight lines of the rooftop, here’s a gentler, more flowing image.

It’s also anything but literal, inviting interpretation by the viewer.

Perhaps it’s a close-up: a linen blouse beautifully embroidered with white thread.

Or maybe it’s a wide-shot: the left-over traces of a field crop in late winter, embroidered by the tracks of snow machines.

You decide.

Most of the geometric shapes we can photograph from the air consist of lines and rectangles – power lines, parking lots, buildings, etc. – but the shape I keep searching for is the circle.

In the image below, my first impression is a pleasing pattern consisting of a circle within another circle, the intense colors evoking a kind of symmetrical beauty.

But looking closer, the photo reveals a threat.

The effluent in this concrete manufacturing plant is uphill from Lake Ontario, just a kilometer away. And that lake is the source of drinking water and recreation for millions of human beings, not to mention wildlife of every sort.

So much for circles.

On the other hand, nearby and also at the edge of the lake, we discover a playground. It’s round too, if irregular, a contrast to the mathematical circularity of the cement facility.

As the park awaits the arrival of children, the descending sun is printing elongated shadows on the sand.

And that creates another puzzle. Which parts of the image are structure and which are shadow?

A final photograph. At the meeting place of two major highways, circles of pavement form a nesting set

Contemplating this massive circular creation, we can consider a host of possible interpretations, not all of them particularly cheerful:

The circle of human life that we travel, from birth through maturity to death.

Or the repetitive cycle of activities that people are fated to follow.

Or the smoke rings of carbon dioxide rising invisibly into the atmosphere.

Or the commuter’s circular routine each day, from home to work to home again.

Or the city’s rare and precious green space, imprisoned in handcuffs of asphalt.

Or the random off-ramps of life, routes that sometimes entrap us and sometimes lead us safely home.

Or…? But perhaps I should leave the interpretation to you.

The images we’ve looked here at depict mechanical constructs imposed on the landscape by us human beings. They don’t exist in nature.

Many of the abstracts and patterns the drone will photograph in nature are more organic, elemental. So another time, let’s plan to look at them.