William Oldacre Photography

Tag: pattern

  • Intersection

    Intersection

    abstract expressionism, city street, urban, movement, motion, blue, orange, green, vibrant
    Unnamed Twenty Two, 2017 — Sidelong :: (click to see more)

    I’ve been contemplating my next project for a while now. It’s a long anxious process, but this morning while observing an intersection on Dundas west – the same one I’ve been seeing weekly for two months, I began to consider intersections as a potential point of interest. More activity occurs at an intersection than elsewhere on a street. There’s an interesting pattern, a rhythm to intersections that might be revealing.

    It’s reminded me of past intersection observations I’ve made and now I’m considering the possibilities.

  • Rhythm

    Rhythm

    abstract expressionism, city street, urban, movement, motion, green, orange, blue, vibrant
    Unnamed Twenty One, 2017 — Sidelong :: (click to see more)

    Wait a sec – I’m not interested in the intersection of time and rhythm, like I said last week – it’s just rhythm.

    Time is a factor of rhythm not a separate element – so are cycles, so is movement, so is pattern. This is why music is so strongly linked. It’s full of pattern and rhythm – on all levels, music is entirely comprised of rhythm.

    I do think time is fascinating but it’s an element of my main interest. However, rhythm couldn’t properly exist outside the framework of time – without the expression of time rhythm becomes pattern.

    And Alignment is rhythm too – on a different scale… perhaps.
    What an A-HA! moment.

  • Pattern Recognition

    Pattern Recognition

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, turquoise, orange, muted, streaks, layers, pattern
    Orange Vacillations, 2014 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    When working on finishing an image – actually even before that – when scanning through the palette of raw material assembled together for a project – I engage in pattern recognition – looking for something. It’s best as much as possible if I don’t do this on a conscious level but rather feel my way – kind of how I imagine it would be if I were sightless and could feel the subtleties of texture and tone in an image with my fingertips.

    In university I took some interesting psych courses and in one of them we did experiments on each other – okay that sounds creepy but really they were totally innocuous. The one experiment I remember was about our inherent ability to recognize patterns. One of the cool things about our brains is how they’ve evolved to recognize patterns – a useful trait for keeping us alive when we want to distinguish danger from dinner.

    Apparently this skill stems directly from the massively parallel structure of our neural makeup. All very cool and interesting – but to me extremely useful when I want choose and finish an image.

    I am a pattern recognizer, finding patterns in the city – presenting patterns for you to recognize – patterns that quite probably mean something different to you.

  • Why Order From Chaos?

    Why Order From Chaos?

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, green, grey, muted, clouds, streaks, patterns
    Stormy Sky Over Dark Water, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    I’ve been trying to get to the heart of why chaos and order are so fundamental to my efforts. I could cite the patterning by music I was so thoroughly exposed to in my formative years as a source. But also equally important were my summers spent north in the woods camping experiencing the natural world. And then there is my innate desire to build that manifested at an early age – people thought I would become an engineer. Somewhere – held in balance in this triangle of forces – is my desire to find order in chaos.

    Order from chaos is a slippery concept. One could argue that chaos is a relative state dependent on the sample size of the system in question. Order can be found in any chaotic system if you take a large enough perspective… this is my intuitive feeling at least. But if you look closely the overall patterns disappear and all you see is random behavior. In an active system such as a city, it’s at the boundary layer – between the large and the small sample – that interesting things happen. Where the abrupt manifestation of pattern in the noise will give a tantalizing glimpse of the larger order.

    I find this fascinating – and strangely – hopeful.