Photo Project Idea - Circles

One of the projects for a photo shoot of our photo club was: roam the area you live in and find natural and man-made circles. I love those field photo trips with a goal; they make you look more closely to what nature has to offer.

Circles in nature? Yes, just that and when you start looking for them, you will discover that nature has made a lot of circles.

Most natural forms are either round (circles) or curved. You won't find rectangles or squares in nature unless they have been formed by different objects.

In this article I will show you the circles I found in my neck of the woods in natural and man made form.

I live in an area filled with pollard willows. Some willow trees in my area are over 100 years old. We don't chop the dead ones down, but leave them standing, because even dead the willows have an important purpose.

Woodpeckers often nest in them, making circle shaped entries to their nest holes. They also find all kinds of edible bugs on these trees. I found this group of pollard willows not far from my house and they all had been visited by woodpeckers. They were not all dead trees though. When pollard willows are damaged, only part of the tree will become deadwood, but the living bark will go on producing branches.

I didn't have to go too far to find this beautiful gnarl. It was sitting right in my own garden, in the door of the old outside toilet house. The green paint paled by age. It's gone now, the old toilet house because we connected the barn to the main house and the old toilet house was standing in the way, it had to go. So I'm glad I could take this picture just in time.

Fungus like to grow on old trees and this one grows in circles. I just love the beautiful dark reddish colours with the white trim.

Natural circles can be found close to home.

When I clean vegetables I throw the remains outside on the muckheap and that's where I found this stump of a leek. It was a bit dried out and it looked just perfect for my photo project circles.

Forcing yourself to find certain shapes in nature, will result in looking closer to the environment around you, which - of course - is a good thing.

So many circles surround you in your daily life.

This photo above was taken in the Province Drenthe, up North in my country The Netherlands.

I thought it was rather nice looking and it appeared to be a hedge, which they had clipped in the form of a basket with a round handle.

Now you know what to do with the hedges in your garden. You can clip them into a basket and sit in it.

This turkey belonged to my sister and he didn't want his photo taken, so he puffed himself all up till he looked like a big white feathered ball. Sometimes you need a bit of imaginary to see circles in nature, because in nature nothing is shaped in a perfect line.

It's always so much fun to work out a special assignment with a group of people, because every one will look upon things and see things in a different way. And you know what: long after the project is finished you still see circles everywhere.

Man-made circles can be found everywhere, in the streets, in the harbour, in the buildings. Other than the natural circles, the hand made ones normally have the perfect mathematic form. I love that form, it has something infinitive, a never ending line.

I hope by showing my photos about natural and man-made circles will help you and maybe has aroused some awareness of looking closer to the things around you and see the beauty of it all. Nature has made so many forms either by the shape of the plants or by a natural frame.

After the photo project was done, all who took part in this photo shoot showed their pictures and it was so amazing to see how different each of us had looked upon this assignment. It's a great way of learning how to look at the little beautiful things that surrounds you.