The Secret to Finding Beauty

AWARENESS. Awareness is the secret to finding beauty.

Recently Kate and I took a quick trip to a small island off the coast of Seattle called Vashon to visit two of our good friends Michael and Angel…I was vlogging the trip. While reviewing the footage, I noticed myself noticing / saying how “beautiful” this or that was, noticing small details in they way something looked or smelled … like 50 times. In short, it started me thinking about awareness as a skill.

Certainly I’ve made a career in awareness as a photographer — finding moments or, arguably, the beauty in things. But more important than that, I think awareness (not just of beauty but of things – but awareness in general, internal states, etc) is a powerful tool — one that gets us all out of your head, into the present moment, and more connected to the world around us.

In fact, when people are early in their career as ‘creatives’ I find that awareness is usually one of the biggest opportunities for growth. It’s the secret to developing your point of view. It’s also why we need to be good at the fundamentals of our crafts – so we can free our mind up from thinking about camera settings and frame rates and start noticing the details about crafting or capturing the right moment(s).

To that end, enjoy the short vlog above, but keep an eye out for a weekly video snippet I’ll be dropping on my social feeds when I notice something interesting… For lack of a better name, I’ll call it “What I Notice”. 😉 They’ll stand alone for sure, but those of you who read this / watch this vlog will know from whence it came.

Cheers.