I think sometimes, as photographers, we convince ourselves that photography needs a destination.
We need to go somewhere.
The zoo. The Botanic Garden. The coast. The hills. Somewhere new, somewhere beautiful, or simply somewhere that feels worthy of taking the camera.
I know I’ve certainly felt that way.
There’s something exciting about packing a camera bag and heading out specifically to make photographs. I still love doing it, and I don’t think that will ever change. There’s a wonderful sense of possibility that comes with arriving somewhere with a camera in your hand and no idea what you might find.
But lately I’ve been wondering whether, in our search for somewhere interesting to photograph, we sometimes overlook what is already around us.
Because some of the photographs I’ve most enjoyed making recently didn’t require a trip anywhere.
I made them in my own garden.
Looking closer to home
There is nothing particularly exotic about my garden.
There are flowers, vegetables, a couple of old rose bushes, fruit trees and all the other bits and pieces that accumulate in a garden over time.
And, of course, there are bees.
Lots of bees.
Recently, while spending time around my broad beans, I began watching the honey bees moving between the flowers. I’d seen them there before. They weren’t new.
But this time I stopped.
I watched how they approached each flower. I noticed the pollen collecting on their legs. I watched them hover briefly before landing, sometimes suspended in the air for only a fraction of a second.
And eventually I made a photograph of one of those moments.
It wasn’t made somewhere spectacular.
There was no carefully planned photography expedition behind it.
I was simply standing in my own garden and paying attention to something that was already happening.
That distinction has stayed with me.
“Perhaps photography doesn’t always require us to find more interesting things.
Perhaps sometimes it asks us to become more interested in the things that are already there.”
What haven’t I noticed yet?
There’s a question I’ve found myself asking lately.
Usually, when I pick up a camera, the question is:
What can I photograph?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s probably one of the most natural questions a photographer can ask.
But I’ve started experimenting with a slightly different one:
What haven’t I noticed yet?
They sound similar, but I don’t think they’re quite the same.
When I ask “What can I photograph?”, I’m searching for an image.
I’m evaluating the things around me as potential subjects. Is that interesting enough? Is the light good enough? Can I make a worthwhile composition from that?
Without really meaning to, the world can begin to divide itself into two categories:
Things worth photographing…
and everything else.
But when I ask “What haven’t I noticed yet?”, the objective changes.
I’m no longer searching for a photograph.
I’m searching for something I haven’t seen.
Maybe it’s the way afternoon light passes through a leaf.
Perhaps it’s a flower that opened since yesterday.
It might be a bee carrying an unexpectedly coloured load of pollen, an insect I’ve never stopped to identify, or simply a combination of shape, colour and light that lasts for a few moments before disappearing again.
Sometimes that noticing leads to a photograph.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
And I’m beginning to think both outcomes are perfectly fine.
Familiar doesn’t mean unchanging
One of the traps of familiar places is that we think we already know them.
I’ve walked through my garden countless times. I know where the roses are. I know where the lavender grows. I know where I’ve planted the vegetables and which trees are beginning to wake up as the seasons change.
But familiarity can create a kind of blindness.
We stop looking because we already know what’s there.
Except we don’t.
Not completely.
A garden I walked through yesterday isn’t quite the garden I’m walking through today.
The light has changed.
Something has grown.
Something else has finished flowering.
A new insect has arrived.
A leaf has fallen.
A bud has opened.
The weather has changed the colour of something.
Even if the place remains familiar, the little moments happening within it are constantly changing.
And the same is true beyond the garden.
It could be the street where we live, a park we regularly walk through, a favourite walking trail, or even the light falling across a room in our own house.
We don’t necessarily exhaust a place photographically just because we’ve photographed it before.
Sometimes we simply need to look at it again.
Photography as a way of paying attention
This is becoming increasingly important to the kind of photographer I want to be.
Of course I want to become better at making photographs.
I want to understand light more deeply. I want to improve my compositions, become more intentional with my choices and continue developing the technical and creative skills involved in photography.
But if photography only teaches me how to make better photographs, I think I’ve missed something.
I’d rather it also teach me how to pay attention.
To become more curious.
To recognise that something doesn’t have to be rare before it’s worthy of my attention.
There is an interesting shift that happens when photography becomes less about collecting images and more about experiencing the world.
A walk doesn’t become unsuccessful because I came home without a photograph.
An afternoon in the garden doesn’t need to produce something worthy of Instagram.
And I don’t need to travel somewhere spectacular before I’m allowed to feel creatively engaged.
The act of noticing can be worthwhile by itself.
The photograph, when there is one, becomes a record of that attention.
Somewhere worth photographing
I’ll still go to the zoo with my camera.
I’ll still wander through the Botanic Garden.
I’ll still get excited about visiting somewhere I’ve never photographed before.
There are experiences and subjects that simply can’t be found by walking out my back door, and part of the joy of photography will always be discovering new places.
But I don’t want photography to exist only on those days.
I want it to change the ordinary ones too.
I want to be able to walk through the same little patch of garden I’ve seen hundreds of times and still wonder what might be different today.
Because perhaps the most valuable thing photography gives us isn’t an endless collection of photographs.
Perhaps it’s an excuse to remain curious about the world around us.
So, if you’ve been feeling uninspired lately, or you’ve found yourself waiting until you can get somewhere more interesting before picking up your camera, perhaps don’t go anywhere at all.
Take your camera outside.
Walk around the garden.
Walk around the block.
Or simply sit somewhere familiar for a while.
And rather than asking:
What can I photograph?
Try asking:
What haven’t I noticed yet?
You may come home with a photograph.
You may not.
But either way, you might discover that there was far more waiting there than you realised.
Prefer to watch?
I also explored this idea in a short video, You Don’t Need To Go Somewhere Special To Make Photographs, where I talk about familiar places, photography and learning to pay attention to what’s already around us.