Tag Archives: textures

Reflections

Why I enjoy photographing textures (IndieWeb Carnival: Joy)

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Shiny sheets of dark brown seaweed and kelp

This post is in response to James’ IndieWeb Carnival prompt “Moments of Joy.”

I collect textures.

This is, perhaps, an unusual thing to collect, but I have been gathering them for years.

On most trips I take, whether short outings or long vacations, I photograph textures along with more traditional landscapes. I take them in urban environments as well as outdoors, capturing the visual details that make up a place. So others can appreciate and make use of them as well, I’ve released 15 collections of natural textures photographed in the Pacific Northwest.

But over the past few years, I’ve essentially stopped traveling due to the pandemic. We’ve taken occasional day trips, but those have presented less opportunity for shooting textures. When I went to the beach this week, the visual variety inspired me to photograph textures again — so I shot the bedrock and kelp and eelgrass to create my first texture collection since 2020.

Even though I’ve previously released texture collections from the shoreline in Semiahmoo, Tofino, and Ocean Shores, I find each place offers a slightly different palette of textures. In collection, they reveal a personality.

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Free Textures

Stones, Wood and Water: Textures from the Mountain Loop Highway

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Still river flows toward a disstant mountain vista, with a wide beach of white rocks beside and overhanging green trees to the left. A weathered white stump, curved so it's perpendicular to the earth, is embedded in the rocks near the water's edge.

River at the bottom of the Big Four Ice Caves trail

Washington’s Mountain Loop Highway is part of the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, tucked between the jaw-dropping peaks of the North Cascades to the north, and Stevens Pass to the south. The area offers access to lowland second growth forests, wide rivers and rocky mountain streams in a deep valley between forested peaks. I visited and photographed these textures near the Big Four Ice Caves in early September, when the water levels of rivers and streams was quite low.

Artists and graphic designers can use these free texture photos of turning leaves, swooping wood grain, dimpled stones and underwater rocks in their creative projects per an attribution license (see bottom).

Free Textures from Washington’s Mountain Loop Highway (see attribution license at bottom)

Leaf Textures

A blend of fallen alder leaves in varying stages of decay, floating on the surface of a creek. A couple small rocks peek through between the leaves. The leaves are mostly yellow and brown, but a few green leaves are mixed in.

Golden, brown, and green alder leaves amass in the stream, caught by rocks

Overlapping thimbleberry leaves on a plant (five lobed large deeply veined leaves with serrated edges), green at the centers but starting to turn yellow at the edges and in patches through the middle.

Thimbleberry leaves starting to turn yellow and brown at the margins

Wood Textures

white and gray mottled bark is mostly smooth with small raised bumps throughout, scarred and scratched with brown exposed wood and dark marks

Scars and scratches and cracking knots on the mottled white and gray bumpy park of a tree

Gray, white, and brown exposed wood with grain running in a slight arc across the image horizontally

The bleached wood of a twisted log by the creek’s edge forms a gentle swoop

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Free Textures

Textures of the Sunshine Coast: Rocky Beaches and Wet Forests

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A misty fall morning at Skookumchuck Narrows, near Egmont, on the Sunshine Coast

North of Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia is accessible only by ferry (or plane). In just a narrow sliver of land, the Sunshine Coast packs in everything quintessential Pacific Northwest: rocky beaches, mossy forests, silver waters, fog-shrouded mountains. Unlike the western shore of Vancouver Island, the beaches here are rocky, like I’m used to seeing in the Puget Sound. The farther north you go along the coast, the less civilized it becomes, a wild retreat.

Artists and graphic designers can use these free texture photos of rocky shorelines and lush, dense forests from the Sunshine Coast in their creative projects per an attribution license (see bottom).

Free Textures from British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast (see attribution license at bottom)

Shoreline Textures

Barnacles on gray and orange granite

Small tan barnacles anchored to a flat granite rock tinted with orange. Saltery Bay, British Columbia.

Blue toned beach rock texture

Pieces of wood rounded by the tide mingle with blue, gray and white rocks near high tide. Sechelt, British Columbia.

Beach pebbles of many colors

Multicolored pebbles of blue, yellow, and white. Sechelt, British Columbia.

Dark straight lines cut through speckled white rock texture

Dark fissures carve straight lines through a granite boulder. Sechelt, British Columbia.

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Free Textures

Textures of Tofino’s Beaches: Sand, Barnacles and Seaweed

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misty day at Schooner's Cove beach in Pacific Rim National Park

Schooner’s Cove at Pacific Rim National Park

Tofino and Pacific Rim National Park sit on the remote western shore of Vancouver Island, where dense rainforest grows right up to the sandy beaches. Miles of sandy beaches, dotted with black stone outcroppings and small islands accessible only at low tide. Sea anemones, limpets, barnacles, and seaweed cling to the rugged boulders, while small islands support miniature conifer forests above the tideline.

Artists and graphic designers can use the free texture photos below of beach sand, intertidal creatures, boardwalks, bogs and rainforest foliage from this Canadian national park in their creative projects per an attribution license (see bottom).

Free Textures from Vancouver Island’s Pacific Rim National Park (see attribution license at bottom)

Sea anemones on rock with barnacles

Pale green sea anemones nestle into nooks and crannies of a barnacle-covered boulder exposed at low tide

Patches of pale sand and dark piles of seaweed

Seaweed and other ephemera washed ashore scatter the two-tone beach sand

White spots on brown sand

Crushed seashells form white spots atop darker sand at Schooner’s Cove

Pile of wooden pieces and shells

The tide leaves a pile of lightweight wood, rounded by its time in the sea, tucked against rocky outcroppings on the beach

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Free Textures

Textures of Strathcona Provincial Park: Alpine Meadows and Conifers

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grasses form an orange sea between islands of dark conifers

Alpine grasses and low plants blanket the earth with colors as vibrant as a sunset at  Strathcona Provincial Park‘s Forbidden Plateau. Already, the colors were changing in mid-September. Fall tinges the foliage with bright reds and oranges. Blueberries hang from fiery low-growing shrubs. High on Vancouver Island, yet not far from the coast, the Forbidden Plateau’s alpine meadows feel like a secret world.

Artists and graphic designers can use these free texture photos of fall alpine foliage and trees from this Vancouver Island park in their creative projects under an attribution license (see bottom).

Free Textures from Vancouver Island’s Strathcona Provincial Park (see attribution license at bottom)

vertical grassy field

Grasses turn orange and red at the tips as fall comes early to Strathcona Provincial Park

golden grassy field with seed heads

A field of golden grasses forms a subtle texture of yellows, greens and reds

patches of burgundy and sea green foliage

Burgundy red and sea foam green groundcovers mix in patches of color, spotted by yellow grasses

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