Photography begins the moment you start looking.
Society tells us to speed up, not slow down.
Do this, get this, onto the next.
It's constant motion.
We are always trying to get "somewhere", instead of just being "here".
Because if we're not doing something, we're wasting our time.
I'm guilty of this myself.
But as time passes I begin to understand my relationship with it and each fleeting moment.
It’s not that we don’t have a lot of time.
It’s that we waste a lot of it.
It’s not that we’re unproductive.
It’s that we’re working on the wrong things.
And it’s not that there’s nothing to take pictures of.
It’s that we’re not looking.
You see, the world has supplied us with an endless amount of photographable moments.
There’s a moment over there.
There’s a moment over here.
And by simply observing and paying attention, we begin to take notice of what happens around us.
We stop immersing ourselves within the screens of a smartphone because we’re immersed in life.
The more we look, the more we notice.
The more we notice, the more our perspectives shift and change.
And when our perspectives shift and change, our photography does so as well.
You see, photography begins the moment you start looking.
But it’s even apt to say that life begins the moment you start looking.
Confucius once said, “Every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one.”
Photography is the same.
Photography begins the moment you start looking, not the moment you pick up your first camera and take your first picture.
The moment you lift your head and take a good look at the novelty that surrounds you.
The moment you perish the thought of past regrets or future glory, and grab the opportunities in front.
The moment you stop imagining something else, somewhere else, and begin imagining right here.
That’s when photography begins.
