📷 Canyon Patterns

When I travel and have the chance to spend several nights in a row in one place, especially if it is really picturesque, then I will most likely have a lot of photos from there. And that's good! Because I can take pictures of it at different time, from different angles, in detail, and also watch how the landscape changes depending on the light.

This applies to both more traditional landscape shots and photos like these. This is what I call the abstract geometry of nature: patterns that the landscape itself forms, which are visible from the height of a drone flight :)

Sometimes it is even difficult to understand what exactly is depicted in photos of this type, a kind of photo mystery. Here, everything is quite simple, but, to my taste, stunningly beautiful.

These are Ak-Sai Canyons (or Ak Sai, or Ak-Say — I've seen different spellings), located on the southern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan.

And while I have many different photos from there, today I decided to share a selection of photos in one style. Almost all of them were taken with a drone just top down. It is a collection of patterns formed by the endlessly branching canyons themselves and the winding beds of the dry streams that once ran between them.

What I like about these pictures is how, depending on the lighting at different times of day and on different days, the color of the landscape changes, and with it the mood of the photograph.

And, of course, the canyon patterns themselves — these long sharp ridges with jagged slopes, on which light and shadow fall so differently.

From above they remind me of an endless labyrinth with many branches, in which you can wander for a really long time — the canyons occupy a stretch of coast measuring approximately 15 by 4-5 kilometers. In some places along the ridges there are quite convenient paths (but there are very few of them) and viewpoints, but in most cases, it seems to me, no one has ever walked along them — this adds charm and a sense of wildness.

This is a very atmospheric and photogenic place. I will definitely show it in more detail later, but for now I hope you liked the patterns of the Ak-Sai Canyons as much as I did!