Jon McCormack, a renowned photographer, conservationist, and Apple executive, has released a new book dedicated to exploring the whorls, hexagons, and half-moons found throughout the natural world. The work serves as a celebration of the complex, yet orderly, forms that surround us daily.

Fossils and Beach Discoveries: The Genesis of an Idea

An examination of a 400-million-year-old ammonite cross-section reveals intricate structure. Its tightly coiled chambers display mineral details in shades of amber, rust, cream, and stone grey, showcasing the delicate beauty preserved in fossils.

McCormack’s fascination began unexpectedly while walking on a beach obscured by fog. He noticed intricate patterns etched into the sand, including circular depressions, honeycombed seafoam, meandering trails, and miniature dune-like ridges.

Deciphering Nature's Language

The author realized the beach was a text written by natural forces. He learned that wave action creates V-shaped rhomboid ripple marks, while objects cause localized scouring, forming crescents. Wind-blown sand exaggerates existing ridges into dune-like corrugations.

Animal activity also contributes; snails leave surface trails, and burrowing creatures form sinuous tunnels. Furthermore, wind flattening plant stems can trace perfect arcs and circles around rooted vegetation.

Global Landscapes and Visual Poetry

The book features images from diverse locations, including East Africa. Here, shifting salinity causes blooms of algae to transform Lake Magadi's color, supporting over two million lesser flamingos.

McCormack captured patterns in sediment fans in the Great Rift Valley, visible only from above. He also photographed papyrus stems, whose crowns explode into repeating fractal patterns against the sky, illustrating nature's instinct for growth and order.

The Photographer's Journey

McCormack and his wife relocated to California during the early COVID-19 pandemic, seeking shelter. He began visiting nature daily, drawn to what he terms its “quiet harmonies.”

He noted that transient patterns created by the combination of tide, light, and rock were more compelling than the beach's grandeur. This realization shifted his focus, making him a photographer primarily interested in the pattern and structure of the natural world.

His photographic exploration spanned scales, from examining hibiscus petals in a neighbor's yard to capturing ice caves in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The resulting book, [Book Title Not Explicitly Named, but implied as the result of his work], showcases these forms from microorganisms to mountain ranges.

Meditations on Symmetry and Efficiency

The visual gallery is supplemented by essays from esteemed thinkers, including biologist David George Haskell and National Geographic Explorers Wade Davis and Sylvia Earle.

Patterns have fascinated humanity for millennia, appearing in cave paintings and ornamentation. While folklore once explained phenomena like lightning or animal markings, science now reveals a secret logic behind these complex forms.

The Ubiquity of the Hexagon and Spiral

Snowflakes exemplify symmetry, beginning at the atomic level. Water molecules bind at specific angles, resulting in hexagonal ice crystals when freezing. As they fall, faster growth on protruding points leads to complex, unique branching shapes, though all obey the same physical laws.

The hexagon is ubiquitous, found in bee hives, tortoise shells, and basalt columns. It is highly efficient for space-filling, as hexagons enclose the largest area with the smallest perimeter among shapes that tile a flat plane, offering structural stability.

Spirals and fractals, seen in leaves, hurricanes, and galaxies, also suggest efficiency. Rivers and lightning branch fractally to find the path of least resistance. Spirals, like those in sunflower heads, maximize the efficient packing of seeds.

McCormack summarized his intent: “I wanted to put the wonder I see in front of other people and I wanted to do that in a way that was accessible. This book is my visual poem to our planet.”