Learning: Life & Photography

Life moves quickly. Photography has taught me that sometimes the best thing we can do is slow down long enough to notice it.

Life Lesson From Photography: #1

Slow Down.

When was the last time you sat with yourself? Like, truly sat in your thoughts, in the stillness of a quiet room or environment?

If your answer is not often, or not at all, I invite you to practice focusing on yourself. To do so, slow down. And I mean that in every sense of the word. Sit, lay down, float in a pool, heck… sit in the shower if you have to. But get that first step down, and the rest will fall into place.

Life is demanding. It challenges us in ways that don’t seek validation from anyone or anything. There will always be something that needs to get done, somewhere we need to be, someone who needs something from us, or some problem waiting for our attention. In a world like this, life ultimately forces us to put things into perspective at some point.

By slowing down, you bring your mind back to yourself.

Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. It can be as simple as that.

I am lucky that slowing down and appreciating the little things has always come naturally to me when it feels like life gets to be too much. But even then, I still take time to really slow down and dissect my thoughts and the world around me further than I thought possible.

Photography has helped me take this practice even further, and I hope it can help you too.

Before the era of me carrying a camera around, I think I was already looking at the world in a way that made me appreciate the little things. But photography gave me a reason to stop and actually notice them. A certain light hitting a building. The way someone looks when they aren’t posing. The colors of the sky for those few minutes before the sun disappears. A moment that might otherwise pass by without a second thought.

When you have a camera in your hands, you start looking differently.

You slow down.

You notice things you might have walked past before. You pay attention to light, shadows, movement, expressions, colors, and all the little details that make a moment what it is. Sometimes I’ll find myself standing somewhere for much longer than I intended to because I’m waiting for the light to hit just right or for a moment to unfold naturally.

And eventually, I realized that photography wasn’t just teaching me how to take pictures. It was teaching me how to be present.

That lesson extends far beyond photography.

We live in a world that constantly encourages us to move faster. Faster communication. Faster results. Faster productivity. Faster everything. But sometimes, moving faster only means we miss what is happening right in front of us.

Slowing down gives you the chance to actually experience your life instead of constantly moving through it.

So the next time everything feels like too much, don’t immediately look for the next thing to do. Stop. Sit somewhere. Take a few deep breaths. Look around you. Let your thoughts exist without immediately trying to solve them.

You might be surprised by what you notice when you finally give yourself the time to look.

Slow down. You never know what you might see.

~ Marissa